Poor Boy
by julads
Summary: Stan in Hobohemia, from October 1913 to February 1914.
1. the dark side of the road

**A/N:** This story chronicles Stan's experiences during chapters 8 and 9 of Swarm & Handle, after Kyle ditches Stan in Pittsburgh and goes back to Chicago, arriving on Friday, September 26, 1913. In the meantime, Stan, Kenny, and Christophe have stayed in Pittsburgh for a few days in case Kyle comes back, and when they determine he isn't going to, they all go back to Chicago themselves, arriving on Monday, September 29, 1913. The first day of this story is two days later, Wednesday, October 1, 1913.

I really want to thank the brilliant SekritOMG for her help, support, encouragement and enthusiasm for this story along the way, from when it was just a crazy idea about hobo orgies until it spiraled into the miserable monster it is today. She also did an amazing job beta reading an early draft, for which I'm very indebted. Thanks so much, dude.

 **NOTE:** The descriptions of suicidal thoughts in this story are pretty explicit. The upcoming suicide attempt is serious; Stan is very determined to die. The instance of intended (but not actualized) self-injury is also pretty macabre. Finally, there is also drug and alcohol use/abuse.

* * *

It was loud as hell in Gus' lunch room, and I was hungover to boot, sitting here on the verge of death when Hack said, "Hey, why don't you go to the library today? Or the Hobo College? I know how much you like that educational stuff."

"I don't."

"Yeah you do," he said with a mouthful of toast. Mole was sitting next to him, eating his waffle by picking off little pieces and rolling them into balls.

I just stared at them, repulsed.

"Awright, fine. Do whatever you want," Hack said, rolling his eyes. "As for us, we're gonna be seein' how the market is here."

Squinting at him, I said, "You better not mean what I think you mean."

"What else would I mean?"

Lowering my voice, I said, "How is it you got a never-ending supply of that shit?"

"Uhh, 'cuz I keep buyin' more?"

"You gotta be kiddin' me."

"A hundred sixty dollar stake don't lie, Swarm."

Jesus. His insistence to pay my board suddenly made sense.

"Regardless," I said, whispering, "you can't do that sorta thing here in Chi. You know what they did to the Levee. They're comin' down hard on that stuff here, and I ain't gonna have you gettin' pinched and incriminatin' me in the process. Or even just you gettin' pinched! What the hell am I supposed to do if you get thrown in the big house, huh?"

"Wow," he said, "has it really gotten that bad here?"

"Yes!"

He crumpled his brow, the wiry yellow hairs knitting together. "I don't know how we'd get pinched if we kept quiet about it though."

"Word gettin' around. Somebody sellin' you out," I said. "That's how."

He finally sighed and said, "Oh, Swarm. You ride me like a rattler."

"I'm just bein' reasonable," I muttered.

He frowned.

"What, you think I'm crazy too?" I spat.

"No, no!" he said quickly, waving his hand. "Definitely think it's reasonable advice! Reasonable advice from a reasonable kid!" Then he said, "Only problem is I got a bunch left."

"Throw it away then."

"What!" His voice was piercing, even amidst the racket of the lunchroom. "I can't just throw it away! That'd be like pourin' whiskey down the drain!"

"Fine, then take it or something – I don't care. Just don't sell it." Then, kinder, I said, " _Please_ , Hack."

He sighed with his whole mouth and said, "It's a _lot_."

"It's not worth it. It's really not."

"Oh, no, I meant for me and Mole to do all our own."

"Oh."

"I don't wanna turn into no snowbird."

This was getting stupid again. "Then don't let that happen."

"Well, I s'pose I do got a good handle on my usage."

Hearing that made me want to die.

Summer was over. Flat and exhausted, the lake spread out before me. It was only me on the beach. I had two shots of whiskey in me, and they wouldn't last: I had the afternoon to contend with, and then every hour of every day for the rest of my life.

It was over.

I didn't have it in me to go on. Everybody always left me one way or another, whether they died or just stopped loving me. I still had Hack, and I'd always be grateful to him, but he had tried to leave me once too.

Only when I thought of my mother did I start crying. I could hear her voice in my head saying, _"You're such a good boy, Stanley."_ And I could hear one of the last things she said to me before she died: _"Wherever you go, whatever you do, always remember how much I love you."_ I did remember, and that was why it hurt so much.

It was dark when I woke up, the lake splashing through my haze like a bizarre symphony. The sky was cloudy: no stars, no moon. I didn't remember falling asleep and was lucky I hadn't been arrested. I shook the sand off me and realized my hat was gone. It must have blown away, since I hadn't been robbed – I still had my seventy dollars and cigarettes on me, thank God.

I was sober and starving and so far from the main stem. There was the train or the trolley, but I wasn't in the mood for stares. I needed new clothes. Thinking of that reminded me of how Kyle came back wearing all new clothes. Why was he yelling at me? Why was he hitting me? What did I do to upset him so much? These were questions I used to ask myself a lot.

It was a long way back to West Madison Street, the journey ever broken by dips in alleyways whenever I saw a town clown. When I finally made it, I got dinner at Peter's Place, then went to the saloon next door and bought a bottle of whiskey. I drank some of it there before getting irritated by the noise and leaving. Back at our hotel, I knocked on the door of Hack and Mole's room. No one answered, but I could hear noises coming from inside, so I tried the doorknob. The shock of what I saw next sobered me right up: Mole was bent over the cot, and some guy was fucking him from behind. They stared back at me, just as shocked. Their shirts were drenched in sweat, and the room smelled of it.

"Would you shut the fuckin' door?!" Mole hissed.

"Sorry," I muttered, entering the room and closing the door behind me.

"The fuck, Swarm?" Mole spat, scrambling to his feet and pulling his pants up. "Get the fuck outta here!"

The other guy – who was a little taller than me but far more built – put his hand on Mole's shoulder and said, "Hey, is this the guy you were tellin' me about?"

"No, it's not!" Mole said, but then he looked at his right hand and in a different voice said, "Yes, it is!" Then, he covered his face with his hands and groaned extremely loud. It was the nuttiest thing I'd ever seen him do.

"That's perfect then," the guy said to Mole.

"What is?" I asked. "Oh, uh, you know," the guy stammered, suddenly all keyed up. "Surely you must know? I mean, he told me you were."

"He told you I was what?" I asked, narrowing my eyes at him.

"An invert," Mole said quickly, answering for him. He looked at his hand again, his face contorting.

"And that you always take the male role," the other guy added.

I wasn't drunk enough to not be embarrassed by that. I looked at Mole, who stared back at me like a threatened animal. He was panting, and his face was wet with sweat.

The other guy rattled on: "That's what he said, at least, back at the saloon. Or that's what he told me, at least, although I s'pose it's possi—"

"Are you two on fucking coke?" I asked.

"Well," said the guy with a sniff, "I s'pose so."

"It's a yes or no question."

"Yes, Swarm, we're on fucking coke!" Mole growled.

"Give me some."

If somebody had told a week ago that I'd be sniffing coke and fucking a single-testicled Dutch trombo named Old Fuzzy while said 'bo sucked Mole's cock, I wouldn't have believed him. Then I would've told him to get lost and gone back to doing whatever it is I used to do, probably listening to Kyle bitching about something.

But here we were, and this was all there was now, just me slamming my dick into this guy over and over while my brain ran wild on cocaine. I was going in and out of his ass with the drivel of an imbecile – I wanted to go deeper, to make myself worse, but his skin would meet mine like a dead end. So I would pull out and try again, endlessly repeating myself, my cock growing furious for it. It felt good, and apparently it did for him too, which made me angry. Throughout all this, there was a voice in my head egging me on, telling me to seal the deal and come inside him. The heat and horror of it all flayed me – I wanted this.

I came inside him and left.

* * *

Mole would do anything – all you had to do was tell him: suck me off, bend over, suck him off, touch yourself, move, stop that, get on your knees, lick it up. It was day two, and I was fucking him into the cot while Old Fuzzy stood there watching.

"Who do you wish you were right now, Fuzzy, me or him?" I asked him.

He stopped touching himself. "What?"

"I bet you wish you were him right now, don't you?"

"Oh! Well, ah, either would be fine."

I looked at him. Fuzzy was… ugh.

By now, Mole was making little grunting noises, which was about the extent of the noise he made unless he was coming. I reached around and grabbed his balls, and he let out a choked yelp of surprise.

"I knew all along," I said to him.

He tried looking over his shoulder but didn't otherwise respond. I could just see his hateful expression in my head.

Fuzzy asked, "What did you know?"

"Nothing," I growled, croaking the words out.

Fuzzy recoiled. "Oh. Alright."

Shortly thereafter, he began talking, incessantly, about an Irishman he'd had sex with, saying how surprised he'd been to find out that his pubic hair was red too. This was so horrible that I let him keep talking about it.

"They were as red as the hairs on his head, if you can believe that. I'd never seen anything like it – it was really somethin'," Fuzzy prattled on. "I shoulda asked him if I coulda had one. Hmm, I s'pose that'd be a little strange though, askin' somebody for a pube, eh? Yeah, on second thought, it's a good thing I didn't. That woulda prolly blown my chances if I ever run into him again. And I hope I do – those were a fun coupla days there."

"Tell me more," I ordered him.

"Well… they were red, as red as the hairs on his head. About the shade of a carrot. But shinier than a carrot, a'course, 'cuz it was hair. Well, I s'pose his pubes weren't all that shiny, but still prolly shinier than a carrot. And, well… Hmm. I dunno what else there is to say about them."

I was getting close. "Just keep talking about them!"

"W-well, they were curly and red, and all around his cock, you know, as they tend to be. They were the color of a carrot, and he was an Irishman, and uh, they were as red as the hairs on his head!"

My eyes were wet as I came, thinking about those pubes.

I was such a fool, such a goddamn fool. In the end, my love didn't matter, not one bit: it was disposable, as I myself was disposable. And how easily Kyle had disposed of me. How easily everyone could. Alone in my room now, I rolled over and pressed my face into the cot, wishing with all my heart to feel his hand on the back of my neck and hear him asking me what was wrong.

Oh, so much.

So, so much.

* * *

My cousin Jacob lived in town. He was three years older than me, the only boy of three girls. I used to really admire him. Every once in a while, he would take me on walks and tell me all kinds of things: about working on the canal, old Indian legends, how he was going to beat it out of Montana someday. It made me feel special that someone older was paying attention to me and being nice to me.

The last time I saw Jacob was during the summer after seventh grade, before my mom got sick but after Sparky died. It was a cool, bland day in July or August, probably a Sunday after church. We were walking along the trail when Jacob told me he'd begun sleeping with a girl a few weeks back.

"You know what that means, right?" he asked me.

"Of course I do," I said, and I did – I was thirteen and wasn't stupid.

"You ever done anything with a girl?"

"No."

"Not even kissed one?"

I really hated that he was asking me this. "Well of course I've _kissed_ one," I lied.

"Who?"

"I don't think she would like it much if I told you."

Jacob was quiet for a moment. Then in a lower voice, he said, "It feels really good. But you gotta be careful not to finish inside her. That's how you make babies, you know."

"I know that," I said defensively.

"Well, alright, but my point is it's tough havin' to stop and pull out when it feels so good. You just wanna keep going," he said. "I've had a couple of close calls. You can't let her catch on, though. You gotta make it seem like you're in control."

As much as what he was saying repulsed me, I was also intrigued. "Does it really feel that much better than your hand?"

"Oh, God, yeah. A thousand times better. Better than I coulda ever imagined. It's tight and wet and hot and wraps around you just like a glove."

This was beginning to seriously disturb me, but I ignored the feeling and asked him, "But what if you mess up and get her pregnant?"

"Then I guess I'd have to marry her," he said, adding, "I wouldn't mind that though. She's rather pretty, and I do like her."

I gaped at him. I always thought he was so smart, but this sounded so stupid. "Why don't you just wait until after marriage like you're supposed to?"

"Oh, Stan," he said, looking at me and shaking his head. "Another year or two and it'll be the only thing you can think about. You'll be dying for the chance to try it, and if you're lucky enough to get a girl to agree, you'll be in bed with her before you can say Jack Robinson."

Everything he was telling me was so bizarre, almost frightening. My stomach felt like someone had dumped poison into it. Part of me wished he'd never said any of this to me, but another part of me, just as strong, was glad he did, because I wanted to know about him sexually. I desperately wanted to know about how he touched himself, and I wanted to know about him having sex, but I guess before that point, I hadn't fully understood what that meant. As it turned out, for Jacob it meant having sex with a girl, because Jacob was normal.

I was filled with disappointment in both myself and him. I didn't understand how he could do that to a girl when he wasn't married to her and she might get pregnant. It didn't seem right, and I couldn't believe that Jacob, who I'd always thought was so smart, was doing such a stupid thing.

My situation was worse, though. See, by that point, I had spent a lot of time masturbating to the thought of him taking me out to the woods and touching me. That was and still is my biggest secret, and I've never told anyone, not even Kyle. I think I got that idea in my head because Jacob was the one to tell me about masturbation. He even explained to me how to do it. And while I never actually expected him to touch me like that, I knew then that he never would, and I felt so ashamed for how disappointed I was. I wanted to believe Jacob was right, that I would eventually be normal and have a wife who I wanted to have sex with. Maybe that was just part of growing up. I was only thirteen, after all.

But three years later, I was still masturbating to unnatural ideas. It felt like I was digging a deeper and deeper hole for myself, and I went back and forth between apathy and distress. Mostly, I tried not to think about it, but then I would see an attractive man and think about him kissing me, or God forbid, what he looked like naked. And as much as I really, really liked thinking about those things, I couldn't help wondering if I was preventing myself from being normal one day. I didn't necessarily want to be normal, since I knew with being on the run I'd never settle down and have a wife; but I also didn't want to be abnormal, because by then I'd learned about jockers, and I didn't want anything to do with them. I also really wanted to love somebody one day, and while I didn't expect that to happen, either, I was pretty certain it would never happen with another boy.

So I thought that if there was some way to make myself normal, I owed it to myself and the natural harmony of things to give it an honest attempt. If it didn't work, then it didn't work, but at least I could say I tried. That was why I let Hack convince me to go to a brothel in the Levee two years ago, just before we were about to beat Chi for the summer. He was always nagging me about it back then, saying I was sixteen and ought to lose my virginity already. At first, I thought Craig (who I'd only just met) would be coming along with us, and I didn't want to be the odd man out, so that was another reason why I agreed.

It was springtime but still cold out at night, and we were wearing what was left of our overcoats as we headed down to the South Side. I had some greasy chicken a glass of cheap vodka in me, and I was beginning to feel a little sick as I listened to Hack blather on about breasts and fucking, telling me how great it was going to be. I told myself it was just nerves.

"Should I tell her I'm a virgin?" I asked Hack.

"Hmm. You know, you might as well. She'll prolly know anyway."

"Oh, God, really?"

"If ya go in there all keyed up about it, yeah!" he said before flinging his arm over my shoulder. "Look, 'bo, you gotta relax, a'ight? Alls you gotta do is go in there, stick your dick in her, and enjoy. An imbecile could do it. As a matter of fact, I'm pretty sure they do."

By now I couldn't lie to myself – I was thoroughly disgusted. For the millionth time, I told myself that this disgust was probably the correct response to my own sexual personality. My thinking was that having sex with a woman might flip a switch in my brain and make me normal, but as I imagined myself actually going through with it, I got so upset that I had to keep swallowing to make sure I didn't vomit.

When we actually got to the place, I felt about a thousand times worse. God, the Levee was awful. Hack took me to a thin, run-down building, and I just stared at the façade in horror, listening to all the weird noises coming out of it.

Hack was already on the porch.

"What're you doing?" he said to me. "C'mon."

I couldn't keep it down – I ran to the side of the house and threw up everything in my stomach. It was horrible, but as I was suffering through it, I was so relieved that I didn't have to go in there anymore.

"Jesus, Swarm!" Hack exclaimed, crouching down beside me while I continued to vomit. I pushed him away. He was too near; it was too disgusting. But when he put his arm on my shoulders, I didn't protest.

Once I was done throwing up, Hack said, "Do you feel better?"

I told him yes, but that I needed to get some water and brush my teeth.

On the way back to the main stem, Hack asked me in a cautious voice, "Did you not want to go?"

"No, I did. Or I thought I did," I said. "I don't know. I'm tired."

Hack said, "Sorry if I pressured you into it," and I told him not to be, because he hadn't. Maybe he sort of did though; maybe I never would have gone on my own volition. I didn't know. It didn't matter now, anyway. By now, Hack knew that I was indeed sexually abnormal – I'd spent the summer having unnatural intercourse right under his nose, more or less. And yet he'd never said a word to me about it, unlike how I was always harping on him about whorehouses.

That was how I knew he really loved me.

* * *

Early the next morning, Hack burst into my room.

"Rise 'n shine, Swarmy!" he bleated. "It's noon o'clock!"

I was about to yell at him, but then he shoved a roll and a cup of java in my face.

"Oh… Thank you," I said, feeling bad now.

"No problem," he said. "I came to check on you."

Suddenly, I was afraid he might have found out about what was going on in Mole's room every night, even though I'd made him promise not to tell.

"Well. Here I am," I said, tentatively.

"You been doin' alright?"

"I s'pose."

His eyes veered towards the empty bottles on the floor. "Yeah? You sure about that?"

"Well, no," I admitted, "but there's nothin' I can do about it."

"Eh."

"What?"

He twisted his lips. "You can always talk to me, y'know."

"I already told you everything."

"I meant more like how you feel about it."

"I feel awful about it."

He put his hand on my head and began touching my hair so gently that it made me feel even more broken. "Everything's gonna be alright."

I didn't say anything to that. I didn't want to argue.

"Anyways, I came to tell ya somethin' else too." He sounded hesitant, and I got scared it was something bad.

"What?"

"I'm gonna head down to Winchester to visit my folks and my sister's grave. I won't be gone long – a week at most," he said. "Can you promise me you won't drink yourself to death in the meantime?"

The bread went sour in my mouth.

He didn't want me to go with him.

Eventually I mumbled, "Okay."

He put his arm around me and said, "I'll be back before you know it."

I desperately wanted to go with him. I felt so ashamed, so ridiculous – I hadn't even seen him in three days, and a week was only four more days than that. But I had never been away from him for that long, and the thought of it terrified me. The thing was, though, if I were to ask, he'd almost certainly let me come, and then I'd feel awful regardless. All he wanted was visit to his family alone, and as much as that upset me, I had no right to keep that from him – Hack had done so much for me over the years, and this was the least I could do for him.

Before he left, he hugged me and told me he'd bring me back a souvenir. It was a joke. I laughed.

As soon as he was gone, I started crying.

I wanted to go home. I wanted to be eight years old again, my mom kissing me on the forehead in the morning before I left for school. I wanted to go to my aunt and uncle's house after church on Sundays, and help my mom pick apples in the fall, and run through the fields with my dog in the summer. I wanted my mom not to have gotten sick. I wanted not to have killed somebody.

It hurt so bad, how much I wanted these things. But there was no home for me to return to; there was only my dad drunk on the porch while the orchard rotted, if he was even still alive. I was so stupid to have thought that Kyle was the light at the end of the tunnel. So, so stupid.

* * *

 _The Divine Comedy_ is one of Kyle's favorite books. I've tried to read it before, but I've never been able to – I'm just not that into poetry. Besides, he's talked about it so much I already know all about it.

I remember when he told me about Seventh Circle, where the violent are housed. It was on some summer night somewhere, maybe in one of the Dakotas. We'd just come back from dinner and were curled up in the hay in the barn. I remember being so comfortable, just lying there in the hay with my arm around him after a long day in the fields, drunk and worn-out, only to be rendered wide awake by the stuff he started saying.

"So, Seventh Circle is really big. Maybe the biggest. It has three rings for three types of violence. There's violence against others, violence against self, and violence against God, Nature, and Art," he was telling me as excitedly as ever. "The first ring, for violence against others, is where murderers and tyrants go, basically anyone who's hurt other people physically. So, for example, Dante places Alexander the Great here. Let me remind you that intent is crucial, however. Anyway, this is where the broiling river of blood, Phlegethon is. The _contrapasso_ here is that since these people have spilled so much blood in their lives, now they get to be punished in blood, literally. And what's interesting about this is that each shade is submerged in the river according to his guilt. Oh! And they also have centaurs there with bows and arrows to make sure nobody gets out, heh."

My throat felt tight, but I managed to say, "Gruesome."

"I know, right? God, the rivers in hell are so interesting, and their point of origin is absolutely fascinating," he said. "But let me get to that in a minute so I don't mess up the chronology here."

"Alright."

"Okay, so, the second ring of Seventh Circle is the Wood of the Suicides, which, as you can imagine, is for people who have committed suicide, i.e. violence against themselves. Here, the shades have been transformed into these grotesque, gray trees that are plucked and prodded by harpies for all eternity. And they actually bleed too, even though they're trees. Tree-shade-people, I suppose you could call them."

My eyes were wide open now, staring into the deep dimness of the barn. The glow of a lantern a few feet away barely illuminated anything. I felt like I'd been caught, like Kyle had read my mind and seen all my bloody imaginings. I was horrified. He went on about this terrible forest, and in my mind, I could see it as clearly as I'd visualized it hundreds of times, some darker than others.

I didn't know where it was. Maybe Canada somewhere. But it could've been any woods anywhere, so long as it was deep enough. And I'm talking deep, deep within the woods, not just a few miles, and sure as hell not by any trail. Parts of the woods where only animals go. Parts where maybe no human has ever stepped foot.

I'd buy a gun and catch out, rambling on 'til I reached some little lone siding somewhere, where I'd get off and head into the woods. It would be the middle of summer, and the nightbugs would be chirping, their little yellow lights whirring about the land as I ventured towards my final destination. These details could be shockingly clear to me.

The woods would be dark, but I would have a lantern to guide my way. I'd have supplies too, because I'd have to survive a few days so I could get as deep into the woods as I saw fit. If I came across a bear or a mountain lion, I hoped I wouldn't be too afraid to shoot. That was the real sick thing about all of this – I might have been on my way to die, but I'd be a selfish bastard 'til the end of it, not wanting to be mauled to death by the workings of fate or electrocuted by the hand of justice. The latter is what should've happened, but everything that would have led up to that had only become more terrifying as the years went by. And if I was damned anyway, I might as well let God do with me what he saw fit.

I was a coward. I knew I was. But in this thought I had, I was always determined, sure of myself and what I was going to do. I didn't know if it was a version of myself that would ever exist, but I could see him doing all these things so clearly that it didn't seem so impossible. That me would finally find the perfect spot to sit down, right at the base of the perfect tree. I would be exhausted in every sense of the word. It would be very dark, but I'd be able to see the shadowy outlines of this little space I'd claimed, my final resting spot. The birds wouldn't be singing; they would have already gone to sleep, and so the only sounds would be the nondescript rustling of forest critters running through the brush.

I would think for a while, or maybe not. If I did, I'd go over my whole life, each year starting from as far back as I could remember, thinking of both the good and bad things: all the Christmases and birthdays, all the times I'd been happy with my family, with Hack, with Kyle: swimming in blue holes in summer, laughing and singing at jungles, loving somebody else with the deepest depths of my heart. The bad would go hand in hand with the good though: there was my dad storming into my room and yelling at me for not making dinner, for crying all the time; the horror and heartache when Kyle didn't come back, the agony of losing the best thing that ever happened to me; and then there was the bloody pit of it all, that poor railroad bull I'd shot dead on the tracks. I'd taken a life. I'd taken somebody else's husband and father. And that was unforgivable no matter what way you looked at it.

It seemed appropriate then that I was taking my own life the same way. That was what I thought, at least, but maybe it was just sick; I didn't know. I'm sure that by that point I wouldn't care one way or another.

At last, it would be time to dig the pistol out of my bindle, at which point I'd hold it for a while and think some more about the man whose name I didn't even know. I knew I'd never grasp the pain I'd caused him and everybody who loved him. It would be like my mom dying but so much worse, because somebody would have _caused_ her to die, an actual human being who had made a choice to end her life, not giving a shit about who she was or anything about her. Pain like that had to be intolerable, something that ate you up inside like nothing else. I deserved to be punished for it. I didn't want any mercy.

Soon, my hand would slip into the trigger, and it would be time. I'd probably still be delaying it, spineless bastard that I am. Just sitting there in the darkness of the woods with the barrel pointed square against my temple, chastising myself for my delay. Once I finally bolstered the nerve, it would happen really fast: a deafening bang would shatter the quiet of the forest, and then I'd topple over onto my side, dead within seconds, the blood leaking from the wound only creepingly due to gravity.

Over my life, even before I left home, I'd thought about killing myself. There were times where it was just a sweeping random thought, like, _"I wonder if I'd die if I jumped from here."_ Other times, it was a dark plague that consumed me, bludgeoning my consciousness with virulence that was both mentally and physically exhausting. And then there were stretches of time where I didn't think about suicide at all. It hadn't entered my brain much at all last winter and not once over the summer, with the sole exception of that night in that barn.

Carefully, I asked Kyle, "But what if you kill somebody _and_ commit suicide? Where do you go then?"

"That's for Minos to figure out," he said matter-of-factly.

"So he'd send you to one or the other?"

"I think so, yes," he said. "But if you're going to be so technical, you might as well ask me how it is that Dante and Virgil are going on such a long journey without stopping for breakfast, lunch, and dinner. The answer is basically irrelevant. It's fiction, Swarm."

That didn't make me feel any better. Fuck, nothing could. As I looked out to the lake now, I thought of the Old Man of Crete and how his tears flowed into Hell, all the world's suffering born in water. The water of the lake, assaulted by the wind, lapped upon the shore like gray paint. With all the misery that went on in the world, all the anguish and blood, I couldn't comprehend why the lake couldn't rally itself into a storm of energy and swallow up that which should no longer exist. It was too hard to let the woods take me, too much work. Everything was so much effort.

By now I knew this was going to be a part of me forever. I just wondered when I'd reach the end of the line.

* * *

There was nothing to do. Of course, there were a million things to do – I could throw myself to the employment sharks or even the real sharks, that is, if I ever went and did the sailor thing. But I knew the most I was going to do was go to Peter's Place to grab some food later and that I was going to hate every fucking minute of it, just like I hated ever fucking minute of right now, being here in this little room with my head in my hands and my back to the wall.

I couldn't even elaborate how much I wanted to die. I wanted it so much it hurt, like something black and wicked clawing at my chest and keeping me from fully absorbing anything. Hack wasn't here, Kyle hated me, my mom was dead, my dad was a piece of shit. I felt each and every one of those things in my bones, all of them broken in hundreds of places. My skull was a fucking jigsaw puzzle, endlessly fractured around the awareness that I had taken a life, that I'd fled the law, that I was a criminal, a hick, an idiot, a crazy person.

I didn't just _want_ to die: I deserved to die. An eye for an eye. I was already half-blind anyway.

Although… I really wasn't, was I?

I didn't even lock the door behind me. I just got up and left, barely picking my feet up off the floor as I trudged down the steps. Out on the street, it was painfully bright out, even though it had to be later in the day. It was windy too, which annoyed me as I walked down the block and crossed the street, keeping my one eye ever peeled for town clowns, be they in uniform or disguise.

When I got there, I suddenly didn't want to go in. I just stood there staring through the glass at the shit inside, a big sign hanging from the ceiling that said _"We make keys, quick and easy!"_ , saws and hammers hanging on the walls. There was a guy inside, a normal person in a suit who was talking to the man who worked there. I only went in when I realized I was pushing it with the length of time I'd been standing out here, and when I did, a fucking bell went off announcing my presence. The employee made eye contact with me, which was like rubbing salt in the wound.

Hanging my head, I went down the left aisle until I found where all the sharp things were, the razors, knives, and scissors. My original plan had been to go for a knife, and I was still thinking that was what I was going to go with, but there was also a huge pair of gardening sheers here that looked really satisfying. Actually, all this stuff looked really satisfying, like a buffet. For the first time in weeks, I felt a little bit excited about something.

I touched the shiny silver blades of the sheers with two fingers, closing my eyes and letting out a sigh as I thought about using them. No, they weren't what I was looking for. I moved onto the knives. There were a few different kinds here, a pocket knife, hunting knife, utility knife, general kind of knife. The pocket knife probably would've been the least conspicuous, but I didn't feel it would do the job well. It just didn't seem sharp enough. So, I was just about to look at the hunting knife when I heard the customer say he was going to try another hardware store, and so I knew the guy who worked here was going to be coming over to me in about two seconds asking me if I needed help.

Those few seconds where I could feel him approaching but had to pretend like I hadn't noticed were awful, and then I also had the belated realization that I hadn't showered in God knows how long, which made everything so much worse.

"Anything I can help you with there?" the man asked me with a smile.

I glanced at him before hesitantly taking the regular old knife off the shelf and mumbling, "I, um. I think I'm just gonna get this. I guess."

His brow crinkled uncertainly, a kind of pitying glimmer in his brown eyes.

"Alright," he said. "You need anything else today?"

"No, I think… that's it."

He was obviously a nice person, which put me at ease a little. At the register, I made sure to mention that I was glad I could finally finish my art project in time for my friend's birthday, that way he wouldn't think I was some crazy bum itching to get into a knife fight or something.

"Oh, what are you making him?" he asked me.

"A little wooden bear," I lied, and I knew he believed me, which made me feel bad. I always felt bad when I lied.

"That sounds like a great gift," he commented, smiling and sounding so sincere it made me feel even worse. "I'm sure your friend will love it."

I thanked him, mumbling out the words as I stared at the bag instead of him.

Getting out of that place was a fucking blessing.

As I crossed back over to the other side of the street, I was thinking I really ought to go to the druggist too, as much as I didn't want to. And God, did I ever not want to. I knew I had to though, so I trudged myself over there and spent even more money on gauze, bandages, and tape. Why not, right? If I ran out of money, I could just jump off that bridge and hit the I.C. head-on. And anyway, this was better than ruining my jacket.

With my purchases in hand, I headed straight back to the hotel, eager to finish off the bottle of dehorn that was waiting for me under the cot. Shit, that was why I should've locked the door, I realized just before I got there. It was still there though, thank God. This time, I made sure to lock the door.

Going back over to the cot, I dumped everything out on top of it, concentrating mostly on the shine of the knife's blade. The point curved a little, which I guessed would help, maybe. I took my eye patch off and set it on the cot with everything else. As my vision adjusted, I continued staring at the knife, which I then picked up with my left hand and studied beneath the light of the single bulb. Pushing the other stuff aside, I sat on the cot in the usual position, back to the wall, and absently unscrewed the bottle, allayed by the intense scent of its contents. Pretty soon, I was warm and drunk again, and the knife was even nicer-looking. I felt really glad I made this decision. I just wondered if I had the nerve to do it.

It was obviously going to hurt. I told myself I wanted that though. I pushed the pad of my thumb into the point, though not hard enough to draw blood. In my mind, I could see the red blood of the bull staining his uniform, and something in my mind told me this was the least I could do for him, for his family. Still, I hesitated, just holding the thing in my hand and staring at it. Because I was too soft; I had no guts, right? It enraged me now, thinking back on all the fucking times I'd heard that, and I gripped the handle of the knife tighter.

I took a deep breath to try to calm down a little, then very genteelly placed the blade at the corner of my eye. My thinking was to drive the blade into my socket a bit then tilt it in a way that would allow me to pop my eyeball out. The more I thought about the physical motion of doing that, the more I felt that I had to do it. In my mind, I could see myself doing it very clearly, my eyeball popping out as clean as an ice cube from a tray. It would be like going to confession – the whole process, from waiting in line to being in the booth with the priest, would be an intolerable fucking ordeal, but I knew I'd feel so much better once I was down there in the pew in front of the tabernacle saying my eighteen Hail Mary's. Here, this was going to be my penance. Some of it, at least.

So I pressed a little harder, licking my lips. What the hell did I even _say_ at confession back then? All I could remember was waiting in line with the other kids and agonizing over it, trying to remember that prayer I was supposed to say: _"My God, I am sorry for my sins with all my heart. In choosing to do wrong and failing to do good, I have sinned against you…"_

And I was sorry. I really, really was.

The knock that came on the door all of the sudden was like thunder, and I actually gasped, so alarmed that I almost thought I'd popped my eye out. Panicking, I realized I'd actually dropped the knife on the floor. When I reached up to touch my eye, it was still in there. I wasn't sure if the breath I let out was one of relief of not.

The person was still knocking.

"Hold your fucking horses!" I shouted.

Great, now I had to hide all this shit. Still shaking, I grabbed the knife off the floor and tossed it into a single bag along with the first aid stuff, then threw it all under the cot. Next, I slung my eye patch back on, gritting my teeth as I got up to answer the door.

When I saw him standing there, looking attractive and clean but nevertheless dopey as ever, I couldn't even say I was surprised. No one else could have interrupted something so important.

"Yes?" I asked Old Fuzzy, squinting at him. He was wearing a different, nicer shirt. That made me extra annoyed.

"Um," he said, just looking at me and frowning.

"What do you want, Fuzzy?"

"Oh! Uh, I just came by to see, if, uh, you felt like getting something to eat? Maybe?"

Here was the thing – I _was_ hungry. But I didn't want to go eat with him, and I didn't like that he was asking me to, because now I had to be an asshole and say no. I was already an asshole to him in so many ways, treating him like a jocker a punk, so I didn't appreciate being set up like this.

"Why are you asking me this?" I asked.

He furrowed his brow. "Whaddya mean?"

I pinched the bridge of my nose and bit my lower lip. "I'm not hungry," I managed to say.

"Oh," he said. "Well. Alrighty then."

He left on his own accord – I didn't have the shut the door on his face.

The sigh I let out as I sat back down was definitely one of relief, but it was cut short once I realized the knife was now diseased from having been on the dirty floor. Just what I needed, another fucking reminder that the world was rigged against me. It was so terrible that all I could do was shake my head and let out a small sound of disbelief. I crawled back onto the cot and immediately went back to drinking. As I got more and more drunk, I watched the sun begin to set over the main stem, feeling both better and worse. The tune of a song washed through my mind, and the lyrics, taken to heart over the years, moved alongside the sleepy ebb-and-flow of the music:

 _Do not think 'bout tomorrow_  
 _Let tomorrow come and go._  
 _Tonight you're in a nice warm boxcar_  
 _Safe from all that wind and snow._

But there was no music, and there was no shoulder for me to cry on.


	2. the long road to canaan

Fucking, that was all it was. Nothing more, though probably something less. Just seeing the way their bodies slapped together was enough to make me sick. Worse yet, in the back of my mind was Kyle's voice echoing like a shattered chime: _"It's beautiful; it heals us."_ As if unnatural intercourse could never be a sick and animal thing.

This room was a pit. Even with the coke gone, the walls were sweating, and it stank horribly in here. The smell didn't bother me too much though; my attention was fixed on Fuzzy's dick going in and out of Mole like some kind of machine. I wasn't aroused – I was horribly, disastrously drunk, curled up in the corner just watching them, as if it were some kind of depraved vaudeville act. In my lap was the bottle of dehorn I'd purchased earlier, the only thing I'd consumed all day.

That was one thing I understood now, the compulsion – the absolute, all-consuming _compulsion_ – to drink. It was a need, the only thing in the universe that could dull the agony I was in. I knew now that if I'd have been able to, I would've fallen victim to drink just like my father had after my mother died. There was absolutely no question about it.

That didn't mean I didn't blame him for it though.

I tried not to think about that shit though, just like I tried not to think about countless other awful things: that my mother was dead, that Kyle had left me, that Hack didn't want me to go to Tennessee with him. That there was absolutely nothing sacred about homosexuality or inversion or whatever you wanted to call it, that it could well be depraved and loveless, done for nothing but temporary, impersonal pleasure. This right here was as base and useless as my drinking, which rocked me into a stupid haze, dull waves on a sad shore. The sky was as dark as the sea, and I didn't know where I was going anymore (had I ever really been going anywhere?). I couldn't see anything anywhere, in any direction, and every breath I took was a rasping gasp, as if existence itself were choking me. No matter how far I reached out, there was never anything to hold onto.

This went on for a long, long time.

When I woke up, I was lying firmly on the ground, and I could see that the sky was blue, painted with clouds. The sun was up, and it was warm. For what seemed like ages, I simply lay there, ignoring this terrible feeling that wouldn't let up. I didn't move though, not even when I heard the whistle of a train and knew I was in danger. I couldn't. It took every ounce of strength in my body to roll over off the tracks – that was all I could manage. At almost the very next second, the train thundered past me, right at my back, and for a moment, I thought I was safe.

But then I saw him lying over there, next to the tracks.

He was dead, bleeding out with his hand over his heart. I could see the blood steadily pooling beneath him, on the gravel. He was looking up at the sky just like I had been, and there was a terrible sadness surrounding him. It was so bad that I felt like my heart was breaking just looking at him, but at the same time, I was also terrified, because that blood was getting closer and closer to me, and I knew that when it got to me, then everything would be over.

I was shaking, trying to get away, but I couldn't; I couldn't move again. Any second now it was going to happen, any second now, and each second that I had to wait was always so goddamn terrible I didn't know how the world didn't just explode right then and there.

When he finally twisted his neck to look at me, his eyes were very much alive, and he was furious.

He snarled at me like a mad dog, spit and all, and said: _"You're gonna burn in hell, kid."_

His hatred was so much and so terrifying, but the worst part of it was that it was absolutely, irrevocably deserved. I started crying, begging, pleading with him, telling him I was sorry, that I didn't mean it, that I wished it hadn't happened. None of it meant shit though – it was pathetic I could even utter such things, but being confronted with this kind of fury was terrifying for me. And the dead bull only seemed to get angrier and angrier, his blood pooling faster and faster until it had swelled up and formed a wave that was now making its way towards me. It was a huge sea of red that I knew there was no escape from. Soon enough, its shadow was over me, and then I was being consumed by it, falling under as my face was assaulted with wetness that seemed shockingly real.

When I opened my eyes, the light was on, and somebody was standing over me, his dick in his hand as he continued pissing on me.

It was Craig. Craig from Tennessee.

Grunting and sputtering, I scrambled to my feet.

"What the fuck!" I shouted, tasting his piss on my lips.

"That's for Kosciusko," Craig said, putting his dick away.

I just stared at him, stunned. "The fuck're you talkin' about?!" I sputtered out.

His eyes were crazy as he spoke: "Tell me, Swarm, do you always wait 'til you get snared to tell the 'bos you catch out with that you're hot, or was that a privilege specially reserved for me?"

Without even thinking about it, I threw my fist at his face, but I ended up crashing into the door, missing him entirely. My movements were slow, awkward – I must have still been drunk – but I was going to get this son of a bitch if it was the last thing I did. I got to my feet and was about to land another punch in his throat when, out of nowhere, his knuckles collided into my face. I heard a crack, and then the pain exploded.

Everything slowed down as I dropped down to the floor. The pain was indescribable, all-consuming. Distantly, I heard shouting; I heard Craig's horrible voice, but I couldn't make anything out. My nose was pouring, and my hands were soaked. I clawed at the wall, trying to get to my feet. Somebody reached out to touch my arm.

"Hack, Hack… Where's Hack?" I groaned.

"He ain't back yet," Mole said, almost whispering.

Disoriented and terrified, I staggered away from him, into the hallway, pushing past everybody to get to the stairs. The last few steps tripped me though, and I collapsed onto the floor of the lobby, where I heard somebody shout "Jesus!" It was the night clerk. I got up and ran outside as fast as my legs would carry me.

Outside, I had to stop and lean up against the side of a building. My head spun, my face throbbed, and my vision kept blacking out. Blood continued pouring out of my nose like water out of a kitchen sink. I knew I had to stop the bleeding somehow, but it hurt too much when I touched my nose. It was definitely broken.

It seemed to take ages before I finally came to it.

"Help me, help me – please help me!" I shouted, sobbing, as I banged on the door. "Please help me! Please, I need help!"

Oh, God, somebody answer the door! Please, God, don't let me bleed out here on West Madison Street!

At long last, somebody came.

"Holy—" he began.

"Please, help me!" I cried out.

He let me in and said, "Good Lord, what happened to you, kid?"

Between sobs, I tried to explain: "My nose – it's b-broken; it won't stop bleeding."

"Okay, okay," he said. "Stay here, alright? I'll get the super."

He left me there, all by myself, in the foyer of the Bible Rescue Mission. I cupped my hands to my face to try to collect the blood, though by now I'd already gotten some on the carpet. My shirt was soaked in blood, and my beard was dripping like a wet mop. The banner saying "JESUS SAVES" was still there, hanging from the ceiling. I knelt down and started sobbing.

Eventually, I heard him coming back. When I looked up, I saw him standing there along with an old man in a nightgown. I tried to apologize, but all I could do was cry harder. The old man was gently taking my arm, telling me to come with him, that we had to stop the bleeding.

"I'm sorry, I'm sorry," I said, my hands still cupped to my face as I went with him. "I didn't know where else to go."

"It's alright, lad," the old man said in a thick Irish accent. "We never turn anyone away here."

They sat me down at the kitchen table, and the old man gave me a rag and told me to squeeze the bottom of my nose. I was afraid to, but I did it anyway. It hurt a lot. The old man gave me a chunk of ice wrapped in a rag and told me to put that on my nose too.

He seemed so worried, which made me feel terrible. The clock on the wall read half past four. God, I hated myself for this.

"Thank you for helping me," I mumbled. "I don't know what I would've done otherwise." With my nose squeezed shut, my voice came out strange and stupid – it actually sort of sounded like Craig's, which only added insult to injury.

"The Lord's doors are always open," the old man said as he sat down at the table with me. "Now, tell me, what happened to you?"

The last thing I wanted to do was lie to him, but I was also afraid of him thinking I was some violent tramp.

"Well. Um. There's this guy I know who has a grudge against me over something my friend did, and tonight he barged into my room and just started beating the daylight outta me," I managed to articulate, hoping it sounded believable even with some of the details missing.

The old man peered at me, which scared me – it was like he knew I was lying. But then he said, "Well, you're more than welcome to stay here. This mission house is a sanctuary for all those willing to accept The Lord Jesus into their hearts."

"Oh, I do," I said, maybe a little too eagerly. "I'm a Catholic; I believe in God and Jesus and the Holy Spirit and all that."

"That's good," he replied with a small smile. "Did the bleeding stop?"

Cautiously, I took the bloody rag away from my face and was relieved when no more blood came out.

"I think so," I said.

My nose still hurt a lot though, and it felt very stuffed up. I kept the ice on it.

"Let me see," he said, so I took the ice away too.

The old man frowned, which really worried me. But before I could ask him how bad it was, the other man, who hadn't spoken this whole time, said, "He's going to have to get that set."

God, was it really that bad? I was honestly afraid to know. I looked to the old man, but he just grimaced and said, "One thing at a time."

John, the old man, gave me so much: aspirin, some clothes, a place to shower, a bed. I would have cried over such kindness if I hadn't already cried myself out. I was exhausted too, so much so that when I saw myself in the bathroom mirror, my nose freakishly bent to the side and my body spattered with blood, I wasn't as horrified as I probably should've been. The person in the mirror just didn't look like me – he looked like some bum who'd greased the tracks and come back to life. That beard was horrendous too, much too reminiscent of someone, and I wanted it gone immediately. But even if I'd had a razor, it was too thick by now – I was going to have to go to the barber school.

I took the eye patch off to rinse out the blood. My vision was very off as I did this, everything out of focus and weird. I had to lean over the sink for a good couple minutes until it finally went back to normal. Ordinarily, I made sure to take the patch off for a little bit every day, so long as I had the privacy to do so, but lately I'd just been passing out and forgetting.

My face still hurt, but I felt a lot better after I showered. I crept across the hall into the room where the beds were and climbed into the last one on the right. I had never slept here before, but somehow, it felt incredibly comforting.

The next day, I woke up to an empty room. The curtains were open, and the autumn sun came in blandly through the windows. The building tops were especially wretched in the daylight. It was strange that I was still on the main stem – it was so nice and clean in here, with eighteen actual beds, crucifixes above each.

I felt fucking horrible though. I was hungover, my face was throbbing, and I couldn't breathe out my right nostril. In the bathroom mirror, my nose was swollen and horrifically disfigured, and now my eyes were black and blue too. I looked like a monster, and maybe that was appropriate, considering what I'd been doing recently. But it was Craig who had done this to me. What the fuck was wrong with that guy? If he had wanted revenge so bad, why didn't he do it back when we were in Milan? Did he really come all the way to Chicago just to piss on me? And how'd he even know where I was staying?

Hack.

Hack told him.

He probably stopped in Milan and convinced that snake-faced barnacle to come to Chi for the winter. Which meant that Hack was back too. Yet he hadn't been around when I needed him last night. He'd probably gone to some fucking whorehouse, thereby giving Craig the opportunity to come piss all over my face and break my fucking nose.

It was one thing for Hack to not come find me the moment he got back, but it was another thing entirely for him to bring somebody here who hated me, tell him where I was staying, and then run off while the bastard hunted me down. That was more than just stupid – that was careless. Worse yet, I now had a huge problem on my hands with Craig, who could well be going around telling everybody that I'm hot. Hell, for all I knew, he could've been doing that the past two years. Thinking about it scared me so much I thought I might vomit. The only thing I had going for me was that Craig didn't know what I'd done or where I'd done it. He didn't even know my real name.

Then again, Hack could've told him that stuff.

Hack, the one person who had vowed to protect me.

Jesus' face on the cross above my bed was miserable, his eyes looking up to Heaven with the worst pain.

He hadn't been wrong. I was sure of that now.

* * *

I found John in the office on the first floor.

"Good afternoon," he greeted me, smiling. "Did you sleep well?"

"Yes, thank you," I replied, feeling embarrassed about everything: his concern, my face, the fact that I was even here. "Thank you for everything."

"The Bible Rescue Mission doesn't turn away anyone in need, and you were very much in need last night, Ron," he said. "But I do hope you'll come back tonight so we can pray for you."

"Oh, definitely – I'll definitely be coming back," I told him adamantly. "I'm a believer. I've just… lost my way, I guess."

"Well, that's not uncommon," John began with an expression I immediately identified as pity, "but all those who open their hearts to the Lord Jesus Christ will be granted eternal salvation."

This sort of rhetoric was familiar to me as someone who had gone to church every Sunday for the first twelve years of his life, but when I heard it now, I found myself wondering what it really meant. It seemed like a raw deal for God, if the only thing you had to do to get into Heaven was love Jesus. It seemed like you should have to do a lot more for something that good. I didn't say any of this though; I just smiled at John the best I could so he'd know I was receptive to the idea and not your average 'bo looking for charity. Or more charity, in my case.

"So, um, about my nose," I began, "do you know if a regular doctor can set it, or is that something that can only be done in a hospital? I can pay for it, either way. I just don't want it to heal all, uh, deformed like this."

"You know, I'm not sure," John said. "Let's find out."

I stood there leaning against the door frame while John called the doctor.

"Yeah, it's pretty bent," John told the doctor before pausing and listening. "Oh, certainly." A shorter pause. "Right." Another pause. "Well, let me ask him." John put his hand over the mouthpiece and said to me, "You can either go to the hospital and get it done today, or he can come here tomorrow and do it. In that case though, you have to be here when he comes – I don't want to waste his time."

I sure as hell wasn't going to go to the hospital, so I said I'd see the doctor tomorrow. John scheduled for him to come at eight o'clock in the morning. After he hung up, I thanked John again for all his help and promised I'd be back tonight.

As soon as I walked outside, I was overwhelmed by shame. It felt like everyone was looking at me. Inside Messinger's, my skin was crawling: I couldn't disappear amongst the shouted orders and crashing plates; I was as glaring as the splotches of ketchup on my waiter, unavoidable and grotesque. Out on the street again, the panhandlers and the ky wah didn't even hassle me – they were probably afraid I was some violent maniac who'd gotten into a fist fight. And I guess they weren't wrong.

The druggist said something though: "Quite a break you got there," he commented. "I hope you plan on gettin' it set."

"Yeah, I am," I mumbled, looking at the box of aspirin instead of him.

Once he gave me my change, I got the hell out of there.

I wanted to curl up in a hole and hide forever. I say "hide" not "die" because dying apparently still scared the hell out of me, otherwise I would've gone to the hospital and let them give me the black bottle, right? So I guess I didn't really want to die so much as just not exist anymore. And I really, really didn't want to exist anymore.

Nobody answered when I knocked on Hack and Mole's door. I tried the doorknob, but it was locked. When I pressed my ear up against the splintered wood, I didn't hear anything. The number 22 stared at me hard, telling me I'd done enough in that room. All I wanted was to find Hack though. I had to confirm that he had brought Craig back with him to Chi, although I honestly wasn't sure I had it in me to be confronted with the facts of his negligence.

So I went back in my room, where I sat on the cot with my back to the wall, holding my knees to my chest. If Hack didn't care about me anymore, I didn't even want to be here in Chi. Besides, this was Kyle's city, anyway. Maybe Kyle had even passed through here on his way to God-knows-where. As much as I didn't want to worry about him – he clearly couldn't care less about me – I couldn't help it. I was very worried about him. There was just so much he didn't know about being on the road. For one thing, I don't think he realized just how much effort me and Hack put into our travel plans, and by that I mean finding train schedules, knowing which roads were hostile, stuff like that. Kyle never cared about any of that stuff; he just kind of went along with the program. Furthermore, I was doubtful he could safely beat a train all on his own. You weren't always so lucky to find an empty. I could just see him sitting atop a car and getting ditched when the train turned; or getting caught by the shack while on a blind; or riding the fucking rods again. And there were other, general things he didn't know, either: he had no clue what hobo symbols meant, let alone where to find them; he didn't know to speak the hobo language to other 'bos so they wouldn't think he was an undercover cop; he didn't know that the employment agencies were usually scams. Hopefully, he'd find someone reliable to catch out with who could help him, but on second thought, that just made me more worried. What if somebody took advantage of him?

Now I was all upset. It was sick, actually, how worried I was about him when he _chose_ to leave me. And if after three months on the road, he was still too green to figure shit out on his own, then God help him, because I sure couldn't. No, I couldn't help him anymore. He wasn't coming back. He didn't love me, probably never had. If anything, he resented me. Because you don't treat people you love like that. You just don't.

With my face all messed up, it felt truer than ever that I was defective, disposable. There were a lot of things wrong with me, even beyond being an invert. I knew I was too soft, for one – my dad had always said that, and I also knew it was no good for a hobo to be so sentimental. And maybe I really was crazy like Kyle and Hack said – I suppose a crazy person wouldn't even be able to tell. On top of all that, being a cop-killer didn't help: no 'bo wanted to catch out with somebody who was hot, and the fact of the matter was of course repulsive. That was the reason why I couldn't say I didn't deserve all this – I knew I did. I just hoped God would show me some mercy and not have me live to be an old man. If I was going to Hell anyway, then I didn't see why he should keep me suffering on Earth.

* * *

I didn't want to go back to the mission house looking like a bum, so I worked up the courage to go to the barber school. This turned out to be a horrible experience – the guy had a lot to say about my broken nose, asking me if I'd gotten into a fight. I lied and told him I fell down the steps. Then he went on about some guy he knew who got a deviated septum from a break. But the worst part about the whole thing was that he started badgering me about getting my hair cut. And to be honest, I needed one. But I couldn't take the eye patch off. He finally shut up about it after the third time I told him no. It made me wish I had just tried to get rid of the beard myself.

After that terrible ordeal, I got some dinner and went back to the mission house. I felt very nervous as I walked there, which was stupid. I had been to the Bible talks here a few times with Hack for the free coffee and rolls. That had always been in the dead of winter though, when the place was packed with tramps and bums trying to escape the cold. Right now, it was still warm outside.

The bouncer was that man from last night. He commented on my beard being gone, saying he wouldn't have recognized me if it weren't for the broken nose and those "ghastly coon eyes." It really put me on edge, having my appearance acknowledged like that. I couldn't even bring myself to respond like a normal person and laugh it off or something; all I could do was mumble that I had gotten tired of the beard and so had gone to the barber school. And with that, I awkwardly, desperately shuffled past him.

Less than a quarter of the chairs inside were taken. John was up by the altar talking to the preacher, the same one as the times me and Hack had come here before. For whatever reason, I actually remembered that his name was Leopold. He was probably in his thirties but very young-looking, with blond hair that only accentuated that, as if the Lord himself had blessed him with eternal youth.

I sat in the very last row and hoped nobody would look at me. Soon enough, however, John saw me and waved. Maybe he was surprised I came back. I sure fucking hoped not. As it would turn out though, he most definitely was – after speaking with the preacher, he came over and said he was "just delighted" to see me back. It made me feel horrible.

"Are you ready to open your heart up to God?" he asked.

I didn't know how to answer that. Finally, I said, "I want to."

"Then you're on the right path," he warmly replied.

He went on to say that we were in for a good sermon tonight, his old blue eyes sparkling with juvenile excitement. I couldn't help but find it strange, almost funny. But then I thought about how Hack – and everybody else – regarded these Jesus guys with either belittlement or contempt; I thought specifically about the one time we went to a mission house in St. Louis and Hack made up a story about leaving his wife because her ass was too pimply, somehow managing not to lose it as he told the preacher, _"I know I shouldn't've left the poor girl, and I feel awful about it – really, I do – but you gotta believe me when I tell ya these things were the size of golf balls. You ever seen pimples that big, Father? Have ya? On a lady's rear end?"_

We ended up getting kicked out only because I wasn't able to hold in my laughter anymore, which in turn made Hack burst out laughing too. This had always been a fun memory for me, but remembering it now, I felt sick to my stomach. We shouldn't have done it. Maybe we could've even got something out of it if we'd taken it seriously. That said, the worst part for me now was realizing that Hack had left me just like he left pimply ass lady, my attachment to him no less pathetic and humiliating than her rump boils.

And here I was today, on my own, at a mission house I was very indebted to, looking at the man who had literally raised me up off the ground in my darkest hour, and I had the gall to be amused by his enthusiasm over the Gospel. It was no wonder he was looking forward to tonight's sermon – of all people, the man running a mission house on Chicago's main stem had to be going to Heaven: he was, without question, saved. As for me though, I was either unsalvageable or in need of the most rigorous conversion available. I had told John the truth though – I did want to open my heart to God. I just felt that I'd already blown any chances I had for salvation.

The preacher's gentle voice, tinged as ever with that Midwestern accent, struggled to superimpose itself over the crowd: "Well, it's eight o'clock, folks, so it's 'bout time we got started." He stepped down from the altar and began pacing back and forth. "Tonight I want to start out with a little story. So a few weeks back, a man told me it wasn't right for me to be 'tellin' lies' to you folks here. When I asked him what he meant, he said that if I knew some of your pasts, I wouldn't be so quick to say you could be saved. He told me I was selling 'false hope.' Of course I told him he was mistaken – everybody can be saved, I said, so long as he accepts Christ as his savior. But he wasn't havin' none of it. He told me some people just couldn't be saved, that they had sinned too much. They weren't like me, he said, they were sinners. So I had to let him in on something: we're all sinners. It says so right here in Romans 3:23: 'For all have sinned, and come short of the glory of God.' That's why Christ died for us – he died for our sins. And that's why, every day, you've got to make a conscious, sustained effort to turn away from sin and give your heart to God. Everybody has to do that. Even _I_ have to do that!"

After a pause, he continued: "Now, I've had a lotta conversations with men who didn't think they could be saved, but that one weighed on me for some reason. I figured it was his demeanor, how he was accusin' me of sellin' 'false hope.' It's pretty frustrating bein' called a liar, and I gotta say, I was a little sour 'bout it, that is, 'til I started thinkin' about what it'd be like to listen to somebody like me talk about rejecting sin and having faith in God. I can't say I wouldn't find it a little patronizing. Discouraging, even. I'd think to myself, 'Of course this guy can go on and on about salvation – he's saved! There's no way I'll ever be like him. I'm an alcoholic, or I've left my wife and children, or I've robbed a man. I'm not going to Heaven, not me, no way, no how.'

"But I want to let you in on something, something that might surprise you. See, the truth is, God has a special place in his heart for you and for everybody else who's fallen behind. He hasn't turned his back on you, no siree! In fact, he's got special rewards up in Heaven just for you, to help you catch up. It's written right here in Revelation 21:7: 'He that overcometh shall inherit all things.' And what are these things? Well, the Book of Revelation tells us! It says you'll eat at the Tree of Life and drink of a hidden manna; that you'll receive a white stone with a new name only God knows; that you'll have power over nations. You'll even get to sit on God's throne in Heaven! Wow! Can you imagine being that close to God? It sure sounds exciting, doesn't it fellas?

"And you know, the thing about falling behind is, you can always catch up! As matter of fact, God _wants_ you to – He _wants_ you to make it to Heaven. Sinning sets you back, it's true, but when you put your faith in God you can overcome sin and catch up! You can be one of the overcomers! So if you're sittin' there thinking you can't be saved, remember, God hasn't forgotten you. He hasn't; I promise you he hasn't. But you don't have to take my word for it, because it says so right here in the Bible!"

As I sat there listening, I tried to tell myself that I, too, could "catch up," but honestly, I wasn't so sure. Even if everybody was a sinner, some sins were worse than others, and my impression was that those sins branded you with eternal damnation. But maybe that was just something I told myself so I could believe I'd eventually pay for what I did; maybe the truth was as the preacher was saying: sinning set you back, so the worse you'd sinned, the more you had to overcome. But the point was, you could, and God actually wanted you to. It was true that I'd killed a man, and while there was no going back from that, now I was starting to see that I had another option besides living in the memory of my sin – I could ask God's forgiveness and try to do what he wanted me to.

"So who out there wants us to pray for him?" the preacher asked upon finishing the sermon. A single hand went up. "C'mon, fellas, don't be shy! I'm sure there's more of you who'd like some extra grace. Is that another hand I see? It sure is! God bless you, brother. Who else wants God to remember him?"

For some stupid reason, my hand went up.

"And there's another! That makes four!" the preacher said with utter delight. "Now, could you all come down here and kneel for us?"

Well, fuck.

"C'mon, brothers, there's no need to be shy! Just come right on down here and kneel!"

Eventually, one of the men who had raised his hand stood up. He, followed by two more, nervously went up to the front, as if drawn solely by the preacher's aggressive encouragement. I sat frozen in my seat, unable to make my legs move. Only when John, who was still sitting right next to me, told me to go on, that it would be alright, did I somehow manage to get up. As I headed to the front, everybody's eyes were on me, looking at my monstrous broken face. Never in my life had I felt so embarrassed. I wanted to run away and hide, but the preacher's hands were drawing me forward like a puppeteer, and so I soon found myself kneeling in a circle with these three other sinners, hanging my head and squeezing my eyes shut so I wouldn't have to see them looking at me.

Why, oh why, did I raise my fucking hand!?

"Now as we pray for you, I want you to do your very best to give your heart to The Lord, alright, brothers?" the preacher advised.

I thought I heard myself mumbling "okay," but maybe I just thought it. Nevertheless, I was definitely trying to give my heart to God as I listened to the preacher read from the Bible again. And this time, I was even more shaken, because God was talking directly to me – the words resounded in my mind crystal clear, like a beacon from Heaven. God was allaying me, telling me that I had done right by him by loving Kyle, but now that I had turned away from what was right and good and found myself deep in darkness and sin, it was time for me to wake up and realize that I, too, could be saved. But I had to work for it – I had to reject "rioting and drunkenness" and "chambering and wantonness" and instead embrace God's light and walk honestly in the day. I had to love too – I had to love God and Jesus and Mary and all of God's children on Earth, who were my brothers and sisters, and treat everyone with kindness, as John had treated me with kindness. God was here in this very room, telling me what he expected of me, and under that "JESUS SAVES" banner, I promised him I'd do my very best to overcome sin and put my faith in Him and His love. I now understood that that was the single most important thing in life, and I prayed that I could be the person God wanted me to be.

In conclusion, the preacher said, "And let this day, the nineteenth of October, nineteen-thirteen, be the day of salvation for these men, who have chosen to forsake sin and accept Jesus as their Lord and Savior. Oh gracious God, please grant them the strength they need to catch up in their faith, as well as the courage to persevere in the face of temptation. Aid them should they stumble and let them remember that you are with them always. Amen."

In echoing back that word, I vowed that my nineteenth year would be a new dawn.


	3. the floodgates of our hearts

After sleeping at the Bible Rescue Mission again that night, I went downstairs and got my nose set. I was expecting it to hurt a lot, but the doctor gave me a shot of morphine beforehand, which I initially refused, thinking it might be some kind of poison. John convinced me to take it though, and I was glad I did, because having my nose snapped back into place still really fucking hurt even _with_ the morphine. It didn't hurt anymore though; I was just aware of how sore it was. In fact, I felt pretty good overall, definitely relieved and almost happy as I sat here eating an omelet in Messinger's. I knew that was mostly the drug though, and as much as I sort of wanted more of it, I also knew I couldn't go down that road anymore. I was converted now, on the path to salvation (at least I hoped), so I had to quit behaving like a no-good alkie bum. There were enough of those in Chi anyway, one of whom I was about to track down and have a little chat with.

At the hotel, Mole answered the door.

"Swarm! Where've you been?!" he exclaimed, staring at me with horror that, while justifiable, was nevertheless very painful.

"Don't worry about it," I said, looking past him into the room. "Where's Hack?"

"You didn't go to the hospital, did you?" he asked.

"No, of course not. I saw a doctor," I snapped, getting annoyed. "Where's Hack? Did he come back yet?"

His eyes quickly darted back and forth before he replied, "Yeah, he did."

"Alright, so where is he?"

"Well, he left again."

"And he didn't tell you where he was going?"

"No."

Leaning into him, I said, "You know, _Mole_ , I'm gettin' the feeling you ain't bein' entirely truthful with me here. So I'll give you another chance. Where is Hack?"

He looked up at me fiercely and suddenly snarled: "Fuck you, Swarm."

"Where is he?" I demanded, using the tone I would have used to tell him to suck my cock or spread his ass.

Baring his teeth, he growled and slammed the door in my face.

I banged on it and shouted, "Tell me where he is! I know you know, Mole! You'd better fuckin' tell me! I ain't foolin' around!"

Yet there was no response from the other side of the door. I was so mad I was thinking of knocking the damn thing down when a voice in my head told me to stop and think about what I was doing. Did I want to be a person who tormented others, even if they had done me wrong? No, I didn't, and though I told myself I was doing God's will by walking away, it was also true that I didn't want the cops called.

Hack and Mole were up to something again, that much was sure. That was how it'd been from the start, the two of them always sneaking off to do God-knows-what, God-knows-where. Selling coke, as it had originally turned out. I wondered if they'd started doing that here, but Hack had promised me he wouldn't. Then again, Hack had broken promises to me before, so who could know? All this was enough to make even the good feeling from the morphine vanish, and as I stood out here on the curb outside the Fremont Hotel, fury and doubt ate at me like moths a jacket. My instinct was always to look to Hack for help, but Hack was the very problem here. How could he do this to me? How could he keep things like this from me?

I was going to find him and get to the bottom of this. There was no use sitting around crying about it – I'd done enough of that lately anyway. It was so humiliating thinking about last night, worse yet when I remembered that it could've all been avoided if Hack had come straight back to the hotel – not to mention not bring fucking Craig back with him, which I was almost positive he had. He'd better have a damn good explanation for this crap, that was all I had to say.

The first haunt I checked was Bum Park, since it was closest, a mile down from the main stem. Hack and I spent a good deal of time here in the spring and fall, when he was too plastered to get his ass to Grant Park or Bughouse Square. We'd get here after breakfast, find a nice place in the shade, maybe on Crumb Hill if we were lucky, and I'd read Hack the paper while he just laid there quietly and listened, believe it or not. It put a bad taste in my mouth now remembering all those peaceful mornings over the years, and as I scanned the park for a 'bo with blond hair and an outdated beard, I felt myself reaching my boiling point.

As usual, the place was overrun with tramps and hobos, but Hack wasn't among them. Great. Now I had to go all the way back over to the fucking Loop to see if he was at Grant Park, whether junking in the dump or loafing around the lakefront jungle. Shit, I should've gone there in the first place. That was where he'd be getting into trouble, after all.

With each step I took, I got angrier and angrier. God, he really thought he could pull the wool over my eyes, huh? Him and Mole, keeping things from me, cashing in on coke, bringing snake-face Craig here to piss on me and break my fucking nose. It was deplorable behavior, the lowest Hack had ever sunk, and I was so lacerated by it that I thought I might throw up from rage. Any minute now, I felt like I was going to lose my mind and just start screaming. I struggled to even breathe properly as I marched across the bridge that spanned the I.C. tracks, towards the unfinished part of the park where the jungle was.

There were about a dozen tramps lazing around on the shore, whether washing clothes, mending shoes, or, as it would happen, croaking out hobo ditties in his intolerable Appalachian twang:

" _Hallelujah, I'm a bum,_  
 _Hallelujah, bum again,_  
 _Hallelujah, give us a handout_  
 _To reviv—"_

He stopped singing as soon as he saw me.

"Swarm!" he sputtered. "F-funny seein' you here!"

There was something very off about the way he was speaking.

"What're you doin' here, Hack?" I asked him.

"Just, uh, harmonizin' with my friend Cincy Tim here," he said, his expression becoming theatrically bothered as he looked at me. "I been lookin' all over for ya, actuarlly. Did, er, did Ol' Pearly do that to ya?"

"I need to talk to you." I turned to face Cincy Tim and sternly said, "Alone."

When Cincy Tim left, Hack saluted him, which irritated the hell out of me.

Hack held onto his ankles as he leaned back on the big busted crate he was sitting on, still staring at me like I was some sort of freakshow act.

"So, uh. How you been, 'bo? 'Sides the nose, I mean."

I got up in his face and hissed, "Are you on fucking _coke?"_

"What! No!" he yelped, jerking back and putting his hands in front of his face. "We did it all! Just like you said!"

But he looked a little nervous for about half a second, and that was enough to give him away – Hack was a better liar than Mole, good enough to fool a housewife with a sob story, but not good enough for me.

"I might've… had a little," he admitted before quickly adding, "but only because Cincy Tim gave me some."

I squinted at him, not buying a word of this.

"What?! It's the truth!" he argued.

"Right. So if I was to look in your bag, I wouldn't find anything."

His eyes veered from me to that old sack with tell-tale apprehension.

"Well, I dunno what you'd find," he began, "but I think you oughta respect a 'bo's privacy."

Before he could do anything, I grabbed the sack and opened it. Inside were white boxes – and the unmistakable scent of cocaine. I was speechless.

He snatched it out of my hands, exclaiming, "Christ, Swarm! You're really somethin' else, you know that?!"

"You promised me you wouldn't do this here," I muttered in a low voice. "You _promised me,_ Hack _._ "

"I know I did," he said, his voice wavering a little. "But listen to me. Please, 'bo, just listen to me. Please." He put a sweaty, shaky hand on my shoulder. "I love ya, but some of what you know ain't exactly… _right_."

I slapped his hand off my shoulder.

"Oh, is that so?" I spat. "And just what do I know that 'ain't right,' huh?"

"I was just gonna say, about the coke," he said in a miserable voice.

Scoffing, I shot back, "Yeah? And how's that? You tellin' me the stuff's perfectly legal?"

"Well, no," Hack said, "it's not that black and white. There's more _noonce_ to it than that."

"There's no _nuance_ to it!" I barked. "It's fucking illegal!"

For someone on coke, he was pretty damn calm as he said: "Well, yeah, but the thing is, it ain't so easy to get caught sellin' it. And frankly, I don't see why I gotta do things by your rules when some of those rules don't make no sense."

" _What!?_ So now the law doesn't _'make sense'_ to you? And _I'm_ the crazy one?" Laughing caustically, I added, "Ohh, that's right! You're on fucking drugs! So of course you ain't makin' sense!"

I thought for sure that'd make him mad, but what he did was groan with his mouth wide-open and roll his eyes.

"I know where you're comin' from," he said. "Believe me, I do. But if I thought me doin' this was truly I threat to you, I wouldn't do it."

"Oh, really?" I sputtered, nearly consumed by rage at this point. "So you wouldn't happen to know how Craig got here, would ya?"

"Huh?"

"Did you bring Craig here?"

Squinting slightly, he said, "I caught out with him, yeah."

"So you admit it."

"Jesus Christ, Swarm, admit _what?"_

"That you _have_ brought threats my way," I said, hurting for the truth of my words. "I don't trust your judgment. I don't trust _you_."

I marched away then, but of course, he started coming after me, calling my name. If I were smarter, I would've kept going and ignored him, but instead I stopped and asked him what the hell he wanted.

"Please don't be mad," he begged, all out of breath. "I swear I'd never do anything I really thought would hurt you."

There was nothing I could say in response to such a bald-faced lie. I just shook my head with disgust and walked away again, but he kept following me.

Now though, he tried a different angle, saying in this obnoxiously judicious tone, "You know, sometimes you act like I go outta my way to make your life harder. Like I'm out to get you or something. Now, I know the first thing you're gonna say to that is that I brought Pearly here. And yeah, I did, I did catch out with him. But guess what, Swarm? I can't fuckin' control what that guy does; I can't fuckin' control what _anybody_ does – not you, not Handle, and sure as hell not Pearly. And besides, just how in the hell was I s'posed to know he'd come after you for somethin' that happened what, two, three years ago now? That's fuckin' nuts, how was I s'posed to know he was gonna go do you in over that?"

All this shit really pissed me off, but the stuff about Craig in particular reminded me of something extremely important I'd almost forgotten.

I stopped in my tracks and said to him, "You listen here and you listen good. You'd better tell that friend of yours he better keep his mouth shut 'bout me bein' hot, otherwise him and you both are gonna have a problem on your hands. You hear me, Hack? I ain't havin' this _rat_ you brought here goin' around slanderin' me. I don't give a damn whether you think you can control anybody or not, 'cuz if you can't keep that son-of-a-bitch from running his bazoo off about me, then you know goddamn well that'll be the end of me. So unless that's what you want, I'd highly advise you to keep an eye on that little barnacle friend of yours. Have I made myself clear?"

The resentment on his face was unavoidable and enduring, like nothing I'd ever seen before. I tried to pretend it didn't bother me.

"Fine," he said in a sharp, tight-lipped voice. "I'll pass the word along."

"Good."

This time when I marched away, he didn't follow, but he did shout out a cheap apology a few seconds later. It was enough to make me laugh. If he really were sorry, he wouldn't have tried to justify himself or flip things around and make _me_ out to be the crazy one.

That was it, right there. That was what he was doing. How did I not see it before? He'd done the same thing when he got us all snared down in Kosciusko: after we got out, he downplayed the whole thing, telling me they never catch the right 'bo, that so much time had passed, etc. When I told him getting released from jail thousands of miles away from Idaho wasn't proof of that at all, he just kept dismissing me and treating me like I was nuts for being worried, _as if he hadn't been telling me to worry for the past three years!_ And as if I didn't know it myself! Now I could see very clearly that he was doing the tricky, tricky thing of twisting things around to try to shift the blame. And now he'd done it again.

He must have gotten Kyle in on this too. They thought they could play me like this! I could just see it, Hack whispering in Kyle's ear and telling him to trick me into thinking I was crazy. God damn him! God damn them both! They were conniving little rats, those two, playing mind games on me so they'd look good and I'd look bad. The truth was, they were bad; they were the crazy ones. Kyle had had a goddamn conniption at that mission house in Pittsburgh, throwing shit at me, hitting me, screaming at me that I was crazy. _That_ was the behavior of a crazy person. It was _Kyle_ who was crazy _._ And Christ, could I count the ways! He had left a life where he had everything, where he was going to _college_ , just so he could get a little taste of "adventure." That sounds like plain old stupid, but when Kyle did stupid things like that, it was always under the guise of "sanity" and "logic" that seemed to convince even him. That in and of itself was ludicrous, but then he went the extra mile and bludgeoned anybody who dared criticize him with his little iron fists. He was a vicious combination of insane and despotic: if you weren't with him, you were against him, and he wouldn't stand for anyone being against him.

All summer, I had lived and breathed him, but it hadn't been enough – he needed me to be so sucked up in him that I went along with everything he said and did, even when it was tearing me apart. Maybe especially then. Would that have been enough for Kyle Broflovski, for me to just sit there and take it? Would it have been enough for my dad? My sister? You know, it probably would've been. The sad thing was though, that I wasn't on my own now because I had too much self-respect to keep taking their shit. With my dad, I just couldn't bear it anymore. With Kyle, I probably would have gone on bearing it forever. I even wanted him back. As things stood now, I was in tatters all on my own, instead of being somebody else's broken pieces. I'd let Kyle smash me to dust if it meant he still loved me.

But he didn't – he had betrayed and abandoned me, just like Hack did, and now I had no one and nothing. Oh, God. I took in a huge breath and lamented the fact that I still could. The sky was thick and gray above me – I truly did not feel that there was anybody up there who loved me. All I could feel was the clutch of agony in my chest, heartache like a whip around my neck, and my nose throbbing with the very real effects of Hack's betrayal. My heart had been torn to shreds, and Hack and Kyle were flicking the pieces into a great big bonfire, its massive flames furling into the air. They were laughing it up, sneering at what was left of my body: Old Swarm, a battered corpse on the side of the tracks. How, how, how? I'd needed them, I'd loved them, and they'd turned on me. The pain was unimaginable, and bearing it was intolerable. Existing was intolerable. I sobbed out loud, nearly choking on it, and felt so completely vanquished, so ready to die. Anguish was all I was, from the pit of my very being, to how I never thought I wouldn't have Hack, to knowing that Kyle despised me. Everything inside me was breaking down and rotting – my skin was a baggy old diving suit with nothing on the inside but old hurt, settled down in the feet like dust in a forgotten house. In Texas, in summer…

Oh, Kyle, how could you?

My eyes were pouring like spring rain, like they weren't my own. I gripped my sides and hung my head, afraid that someone might see, even though there was only me again, walking down the lakefront. I knew now more than ever that if I didn't do anything, I'd go on forever enduring the hurt I'd inflicted and the hurt that'd been inflicted upon me. All those things had piled up so high, and they would never, ever leave me. I looked over at the lake, seeing all the little rifts and ridges in the water, and felt strangely assuaged. Lake Michigan was wide open for me, and when I listened carefully, I could hear her kindness in the way the waves lapped against the shore. It was sort of funny: I'd spent so long trying to put this solution out of my mind, but as I stood here on the beach and stared at the water, already able to feel the relief it would bring me, I couldn't believe that I'd ever tried to dissuade myself of it. Killing myself was clearly the answer, and with every step I took towards the water, I felt more sure of it.

For the first time in a long time, I actually felt good about something.

I stepped into the water, and it slowly began to seep through my boots. Once my slacks got wet, I was really able to feel how cold the water was. I bit my tongue and pushed forward, wading farther into the lake. My head spun when I got in to my waist – it was physically shocking, just how cold the water was. By then I was shivering violently, and my teeth were chattering just as bad. I looked back to make sure nobody was on the beach, and even though I wasn't thinking of going back, my brain scolded me regardless: _"Don't you dare."_ I clamped my jaw shut and trudged forward, bogged down by the weight of my wet clothes. That's good, I thought, they'll help weigh me down.

Once I got far out enough that I could actually swim instead of wade, my body was so cold it hurt, and my limbs felt heavy and numb. It required a lot of effort to swim, but I was determined to go as far out as possible, that way I'd be too tired to go back if I changed my mind. So I put everything I had into swimming farther and farther out, away from this city that was not my own, away from this world that didn't want me. By the time I was too tired to keep going, I wasn't as far out as I'd hoped. Still shaking tremendously, I weakly paddled a bit farther out, and just that little bit had me utterly drained. It was so, so cold. Already I was beginning to sink just because it was too hard to keep treading water, so it was nothing for me to simply stop expending effort. I took one last breath and just let go.

As my head sunk beneath the surface, I was even more overwhelmed by the coldness. Although most of my body felt numb by this point, it still hurt a lot, almost in a burning way. That was the one thing on my mind as I continued to sink, displaced only by the short relief I felt when I realized how deep the water was out here. Eventually though, my foot touched the bottom, and I felt a sort of finality to that, or I guess a prelude to finality, because now I had to open my mouth and breathe in the water. I expected it to hurt, and I held my breath for a few more seconds wondering how much it would. In the end, I decided I wanted it to hurt, and I was just about to open my mouth when very, very clearly, I heard my mother shouting my name the way she did when I was in trouble.

That tone she used – sharp, angry, appalled – scared the hell out of me just like it always did, and I instinctively swam straight back up with a surge of strength that seemed to come from nowhere. I gasped, choking for air when I made it to the surface. My head spun as I tried to get ahold of myself. I felt dizzy and incredibly strange, almost delirious. My limbs felt like dead weights, and I was still wracked by intense shaking, but I knew I had to get to shore.

As I struggled to swim back, I felt incredibly ashamed of myself. My mom was up there on the shore with her arms crossed, looking angry. I was terrified: I was almost never bad, so it really distressed me when she got mad at me. But at least she was here. I was so cold and weak that I needed her now, and I knew she'd take care of me. So I pushed myself harder to swim, except as I got closer, I realized it wasn't my mother at all, but a man.

I think he was calling out to me. I had to get the fuck away from him.

Once I got to shallow water, I started stumbling, crashing about as I staggered to shore in my wet clothes. The man ran into the water towards me, and then he was right there alongside me when I collapsed onto the beach.

He was trying to hoist me up by my shoulders, but my body was floppy and limp, completely sapped of strength.

"Come on, come on, get up," he urged me, his anxious voice sounding thousands of miles away.

With his support, I managed to raise myself up into a kneeling position and look at him. He was blond and piercingly beautiful, with clear blue eyes. An angel in tramp's clothing. He was here to save me, and though I was embarrassed and unworthy, I put myself in his arms.

* * *

I lied and told him I'd been swimming.

"The water must have been freezing though," he said, and I could feel his eyes on me as he waited for me to say more, but I had no words. I could barely even think; my brain felt so slow and stupid.

"Weren't you cold?" he pressed.

"Yeah."

I was still shaking, still cold. He had put his jacket on me, which I'd already soaked through. I felt awful about that and everything else.

"So why then…?" he asked.

"I don't know."

A moment later, he very delicately asked, "You weren't trying to drown yourself… Were you?"

I hung my head and said nothing. I was humiliated beyond belief.

"Please don't tell," I asked him in a small voice. Really, begged.

Though he paused for a moment, he did say, "Okay. I won't."

As we went over the bridge, I got scared that I was dripping through the grate onto the tracks, not just my clothes but the soles of my shoes too, since my feet were still kind of numb. I didn't see anything when I looked down though, and then I realized I was barely dripping at all anymore; I was just soggy and damp, like an old rag. They should just start calling me that. After all, it was Hack who'd come up with my moniker. Maybe it was time for a new one.

A train was coming, whistling as it stormed down from Central Station. It made me nervous being on this bridge in the middle of the day, and I looked around to make sure there weren't any town clowns who might think we were trying to catch out. I didn't see any, but you can never be sure, because sometimes they wear regular clothes to fool people. So I tried my best to keep my eye peeled, even though I felt like I was going to pass out.

"What's your name, by the way?" the man asked me.

"Huh?"

"I said, what's your name?"

"Swarm."

"Well, it's nice to meet you, Swarm. I'm Goldy Gary – though usually just Goldy," he said with a small laugh.

It would've been an appropriate moniker even if he weren't blond. He was radiant, while I myself was grimy and grotesque. The tape and packing in my nose had fallen off, exposing my black and blue face to the world. And though my eye patch had miraculously stayed on, I'm sure it just made me look more hideous in context. Despising myself, I turned away from him. The train was closer now, and the black smoke coming out of it looked monstrous.

"M'sorry," I told Goldy as we stepped off the bridge.

"For what?" he asked sincerely.

Eventually, I replied, "You don' have to help me."

"I _want_ to help you," he insisted.

I didn't understand that at all.

The hospital was down on the corner. When Goldy told me he was taking me to the hospital, I initially refused, but he said I'd get sick otherwise. Again, I realized how stupid it was for me to be worrying about the black bottle when apparently I wanted to die anyway. Well, yes, but the black bottle still scared me. Just looking at the hospital scared me. Maybe Goldy would save me again. Thinking about that made me feel uncomfortable though, like I was a woman in some novel. I didn't like it.

When we went inside, Goldy said to the receptionist: "My cousin here needs help – he fell in the lake and he's, ah, he's anemic. Please, can you help us? He's about to freeze to death."

The receptionist's eyes on me were unbearable, absolutely brimming with judgment.

"You're going to have to go to the emergency room," she said. "The entrance is around the corner on Prarie Street. You'll see it; it's labeled."

"Alright," Goldy said. "Thanks for your help, ma'am."

Goldy ushered me back outside, where he clucked his tongue but didn't say anything. I was just glad she didn't tell us to get lost.

We went up the steps of the entrance labeled "EMERGENCY" and went up to the front desk. All the hustle and bustle in here made my head feel even slower, and I couldn't focus on what Goldy was saying. A pretty young nurse with auburn hair suddenly appeared, carrying blankets. Her shoes clicked on the white tile as she led us back. She was walking so fast that I couldn't keep up with her; the whole world still felt so fuzzy and slow. Goldy was here though, helping me along, thank God.

We got to an empty bed, and then, the next thing I knew, the nurse had shut the curtain on Goldy's face and was stripping my wet clothes off me.

"Goldy! Goldy!" I cried out. I sounded like a child, and I felt like one too, nearly in tears as this nurse tore off my shirt with none of the kindness I'd expected of her.

"I'm right here!" he said on the other side of the curtain.

"Don't go!" I begged. "Please, don't leave me here!"

"I'm not going anywhere, I promise," he said from just outside the curtain. His voice was so calm, so kind and reassuring that it allayed me a little. I really felt I could trust him.

"You're going to be fine," the nurse told me in a very matter-of-fact tone. By now she had begun trying to pull my boots off. "We just need to get these wet clothes off you."

It took me a moment to realize I should probably help her. I shucked off my soggy left boot and then helped pull my pants down, which was mortifying.

I was probably only naked for three seconds total though before she began wrapping me in blankets. As she was doing this, I saw that her eyes were very similar to Kyle's, green with an amber ring around the pupil, though the amber in her eyes was much brighter, almost golden. You almost never see anybody with eyes like that. It put a terrible taste in my mouth.

"Do you feel confused?" she asked me.

"About what?"

"Just in general."

"Not really."

"Tired?" she asked.

"Extremely," I said.

A moment later, she asked, "What happened to your nose?"

"Somebody broke it."

I couldn't figure out how she was looking at me. It wasn't concern – it was more like uncertainty, maybe even stress. It made me feel uncomfortable and kind of guilty. I had the urge to apologize for myself.

"Well, we'll put some tape on it," she said before going to grab something from the cabinet: a thermometer. "Here. Let's take your temperature while I get you something warm to drink."

I watched her shake the thermometer and then let her put it in my mouth. When she left, the curtain flying back open, I saw Goldy standing there, just like he had promised. We made eye contact for a brief moment, and he smiled at me reassuringly. I blushed and looked away, huddling up in the blankets and trying to hide myself. It was instinctive; I couldn't help it.

Alone now, I closed my eyes and hung my head, feeling like I might fall asleep. By now I was a little warmer, but my face was still throbbing. I wondered if that bottle of aspirin was still in my pants, or even more importantly, my wallet. It would be very, very bad if I lost my wallet – they'd definitely give me the black bottle if I couldn't pay the hospital bill. A little voice in my head reminded me again that I'd wanted to die, and then I got very frustrated with myself. It just wasn't that simple.

The nurse came back with a cup of tea. She set it on the table and took the thermometer out of my mouth.

"Ninety three degrees," she said after reading it. "Could be worse. How long were you in the water?"

"I dunno."

"So what made you decide to go swimming on a day like today, anyway?" she asked.

"I guess I was hot," I mumbled. I couldn't recall any of what Goldy had said when we came in here, and I was worried about contradicting him. "I don't think I realized how cold it was until I'd been in there for a while."

"Were you feeling sick beforehand?"

"I don't know… I don't think so."

"Alright." She handed me the tea. "It should be cool enough to drink. Just don't drink it too fast."

There was a tea bag still seeping in the clear liquid, and it did smell like tea, so I decided it was safe. As I drank it, I realized how thirsty I was, so I also asked for a glass of water, but she told me I had to drink hot beverages. Once I finished the first cup, she went and got me another, reminding me again to drink slowly. Then she told me she'd come back in a bit to check my temperature again. Before she left, I asked her if Goldy could please come in and sit with me, and although she hesitated for a moment, she did end up saying yes, even going so far as to welcome him in as she left. He nodded at her, smiling, and then looked at me with this expression of utmost sympathy. It made me feel so small and stupid – I couldn't fathom that anyone less than an angel would be so selfless and kind, and to me of all people.

He came over and gently touched my shoulder over the blankets.

"Do you feel any better?" he asked me, and for one stupefying moment, I was transfixed by his face: he really was breathtaking, with angular features that made him look masculine but in a youthful way, and eyes so blue and soft that when you looked into them, you could see how warm of a person he was. I guessed he was in his mid-twenties, maybe a little older than Hack.

Shaking myself out of it, I replied, "Yeah."

"That's good," he said, rubbing my shoulder with heartbreaking reassurance. It was similar to the way Hack would sometimes do. But thinking of Hack now sent me straight back to the lakefront, to being underwater. If I'd succeeded, I'd be dead now. I closed my eyes and thought about that. Mostly I felt regretful – if I were dead, I wouldn't be here in this noisy hospital with this mean nurse. I had to remind myself that dying wasn't just sleeping forever; it was going to Heaven or Hell or Purgatory. And anyway, it was clear God didn't want me to die now, because he'd sent Goldy to save me. So that meant God really did love me and didn't want me to die. He and my mom really were looking out for me. This made me feel a little better – not much, but a little.

I drank some more tea and stared at Goldy's shoes. They were in good shape, probably recently acquired – there was no way he'd worn them all summer. Then again, he could've been on the homeguard all summer, or I guess it was also possible he was just a tramp, though I really doubted that. I realized it was high time I got new shoes myself. Every mile I'd gone with Kyle I'd walked in the soggy, broken boots that were lying at the bottom of the pile of my clothes on the floor. Goldy's jacket was also in that pile. I couldn't even bear to mention that to him – it was representative of how I was dragging him into my filth.

Daring myself to look him in the eye, I said, "Thank you."

"Don't thank me," he said, his tone warmer than the tea, the blankets. "I couldn't have just left you there."

The nurse came back with more tea and took my temperature again. This time, it was ninety-six.

"Getting there," she said, her green eyes fixed on the thermometer. Suddenly, she looked up at me and began scrutinizing my face, which frankly scared me a little, like she was forming the words in her head to criticize me. "Your nose looks pretty straight, but there's a lot of bruising. When did you break it?"

"The other day," I told her. "It's set – it's been set. A doctor did it."

"Alright, well, let's tape it up again so it stays in place," she said. "Does it hurt?"

"Yes."

"Alright. I'll get you something for that."

She got gauze and tape and scissors from the drawer, which she then set down next to me on the bed.

"Can you take off the eye patch?" she asked, but in a way that didn't sound like a request.

"No!" I instantly sputtered out, jerking away from her.

That seemed to surprise her, but I didn't care – I'd run out of here before anybody took my eye patch off. Also, I didn't know why she was even asking when the doctor this morning didn't.

"Oh. Well… I guess you can keep it on then," she eventually said.

Afterward, she just sort of stood there for a moment before going and cutting pieces of gauze to put up my nose. I was expecting her to be rough like she'd been when she was taking my clothes off, but she was surprisingly gentle.

Now with my nose all packed up again, I had to breathe out my mouth, which made me feel even uglier in front of Goldy. I wanted to hide; I felt so disgusting.

The nurse came back a while later and gave me a pill, which I took without even stopping to think that it might be bad. Yet again, she took my temperature, and this time, it was almost normal.

"The doctor'll be in to see you soon," she said before leaving, the curtain swooshing behind her.

By now I had finished the third cup of tea and really had to pee, but decided to hold it for a few more minutes, until it became unbearable. At that point, Goldy took it upon himself to go find out where the bathroom was, and then he insisted on helping me get there, which I guess was fine because I was still so tired I felt like I was going to fall over. On the way there and back, I kept my head down so nobody could see my face. By the time I got back to my bed, I felt like I'd run a marathon. I lay down and closed my eyes for just a second when all of the sudden, that fucking nurse was back again, waving that thermometer in my face. Lying there with the thermometer in my mouth, I began dozing off again, not thinking of anything as I stared at the floral pattern of the wallpaper. Just as I was about to fall asleep, the nurse returned, took the thermometer out of my mouth and said it was normal.

Then she disappeared for the last time.

* * *

It smelled awful down in the basement, like strong chemicals and the trace scent of mold, or maybe that was just that smell that accompanied dark, slightly damp spaces. Either way, it was all-consuming and didn't put me anymore at ease trying to navigate this place in the dark. Up ahead, there was a single bulb dangling from the ceiling and illuminating an assortment of paraphernalia – tables, a cistern, metal drums.

Beyond all that, I saw a flight of stairs. An exit.

As I quietly headed towards it, trying my best not to look at anything in particular, the awful aura of this place only intensified. There was suffering down here, suffering and death. As if on their own, my eyes shot towards a heavy steel door with a circular window. It was up on the left, in the shadows, contrasting with the vaguely-lit wooden steps up on the right. My eyes were stuck on that door, and my ears were pricked, terrified I'd suddenly hear screaming from inside.

It was quiet though. Very, very quiet. And that made it all the more eerie.

Finally, I made it to the light. As I walked past the metal tables, I accidentally noticed that one had a bloody cloth on it. I immediately squeezed my eyes shut and blindly raced the rest of the way to the stairs. By now, my heart was beating so fast it felt like it was caught in my throat, almost choking me. I just prayed to God I'd be able to find my way out from the first floor, because I wasn't going to last long in here otherwise.

The stairs creaked, because of course. It was an agony trying to walk as quietly as possible and failing each time. The high-pitched sound of creaky wood seemed to echo loud as gunshots through the cellar. If I made it up these steps without getting caught, it was going to be a goddamn miracle.

Somehow, I made it. At the top of the steps, I stood there with my sweaty hand resting on the handle, still too shaky to turn it. My other hand was clutching my chest, my heart still pounding inside, utterly unable to calm down. At my back, I could sense the profound darkness of the cellar. So much cruelty, so much brutality. It was sick, just completely sick. But then, who was I to talk?

When I finally opened the door, what I saw was disturbingly normal. Just a hallway, with a window looking out onto the street and numbered doors. I looked left and right, but the hallway made turns in both directions, both paths disappearing out of sight. I didn't sit around debating which way to go though; I just went right, turning around the corner and then around another. This corridor went down reasonably far, but as I went down it, passing more numbered doors, I had this weird feeling that I wasn't making any progress, as if I were hardly even moving. At this point, I knew I needed to get out _now_ , so I retraced my steps to get back to that window that overlooked the street, thinking I'd just jump out of it. Yet when I did that… I couldn't find it. I went exactly the same way I had gone, even encountering that cellar door again, but the window just wasn't there.

That was when my eye caught sight of something: from beneath a nearby door, a bright red pool of blood was steadily oozing out. I stood there, completely frozen as I watched it continue to creep out, knowing exactly whose blood it was. Even out here in the hallway, I could sense his rage, and if I listened very carefully, I could hear the vague sounds of him gasping and sputtering.

The blood was getting dangerously close to my feet. For some insane reason, I had this bizarre compulsion that I _had_ to go open the door. I even found my arm reaching out to do so, but it was right at that second that the edge of the pool touched my foot, and I suddenly got my wits back about me. As fast as my legs could carry me, I ran back the way I had just came, searching desperately for a window, a stairwell, an exit.

But when I turned yet another corner in this labyrinthine place, what I stumbled across was not that at all – rather, it was the murderous mastermind himself, in all his evil glory. He was just exiting a room when he laid eyes on me, his features instantly contorting with rage.

"You're in for it now, boy," he uttered, his eyes narrowed as he came towards me.

That was when I noticed the hatchet in his hand and the blood spattered all over him.

I ran. I didn't know where to; I just ran as fast as I possibly could, going any which way to try to lose him. But every time I looked back, he was always right on my tail, lunging towards me and swinging that hatchet, screaming that he was going to cut my throat and sell my body to medical school, that I was a cheat, a fake, a killer, but that I was too soft to ever be a true yegg, and that he was going to get me for it.

As I ran in horror down these down endless, winding corridors, I squeezed my eyes shut and covered my ears, which did nothing, for I could still hear his awful voice saying those awful things clear as day, as if he were speaking to me in my mind. And he was saying these things so fast, with such a bizarre inflection, that it was almost like he was speaking in tongues. It was completely fucking terrifying, and I couldn't get it to stop. I was barely even aware that I was sobbing, begging for him to stop.

When I dared look back again, I saw that he wasn't alone: the railroad bull, bloodied and bloated, was awkwardly running right alongside him, spurting blood as he staggered along impossibly fast. His eyes were red, completely full of blood, coloring his rage and hatred towards me. He was shouting too, but it was completely incomprehensible. The hate in his eyes said enough though – his gaze burned through my back like hot coals, scalding me as it echoed: _"You. You did this to me. You. It was_ you."

Out of foolish desperation, I began checking random doors, but all of them turned out to be locked, raising my terror to unimaginable levels. It was when I was sure I was going to die that I was finally granted some mercy: at last, I found a door that was unlocked, and I immediately scrambled inside and slammed it shut behind me. They started banging on it, screaming as they tried to open it, but I managed to keep the door closed with my body, eventually locking it with enormous difficulty.

I was safe. Finally, I was safe. They were still outside, pounding on the door and rattling the knob, but at least now they couldn't get to me.

Then, I looked around and saw that I wasn't alone in this tiny, concrete cell: lying on the floor just a few feet away from me was Kyle, curled up in a fetal position with his back to me. I immediately realized that something was wrong. It wasn't something I knew just from looking at him; it was something I felt in my gut, that earth-shattering awareness that something was horribly, horribly wrong.

"Kyle…?" I said in a tiny voice, too terrified to approach him.

Again, I said, "Kyle? What're you doing?" Becoming even more anxious, I said, "Kyle, get up, we have to get out of here."

It seemed like a hundred years passed as I cautiously stepped forward, kneeling down as I approached him. My hand was shaking as I touched his shoulder, and when I did, he rolled over almost automatically. That was when I saw the most horrifying thing I'd ever laid eyes on. Kyle's face was ashen and bruised, deformed by the swelling and slashed in places, the dried blood almost black. His eyes were dull, lifeless, staring straight ahead.

Then, the universe shifted, and suddenly, everything was dark.

I didn't know where I was. The door was open a crack, so there was just enough light for me to see somebody in a rocking chair in the corner. At first I thought it was Hack or even Kyle, but as parts of my patchy memory pieced together, I realized it was Goldy and he was sleeping. Knowing he was still here put me at tremendous ease, and I laid back and exhaled with relief. Outside the door, I could hear the vague sounds of voices and movement. I guess I'd been moved to my own room at some point. Vaguely, I could kind of remember going up some steps – or had that been the dream too? My recollection of things was incredibly spotty going as far back as this afternoon. I could remember Goldy being there generally, but I couldn't figure out exactly how I got from the lakefront to the hospital.

Maybe Goldy brought me here…?

But why was it that I hadn't succeeded in drowning myself? Did Goldy stop me? God, I sure hoped not; this situation was already extremely embarrassing, since Goldy _had_ to have known I'd been trying to kill myself – I couldn't imagine having lied my way out of that one, with it having been such a chilly day.

Yet despite my shame and confusion, I also had to admit that I felt perfectly safe here in this dark hospital room with Goldy. And that God awful nightmare I'd just had was only that – a nightmare. Even so, the image of Kyle's dead face still haunted me, materializing clear as day when I closed my eyes. God, H. H. Holmes and that bull chasing me through the Murder Castle, then finding Kyle's battered corpse? Jesus Christ, what an awful fucking nightmare, probably one of the worst I'd ever had. I just tried to take deep breaths and tell myself it wasn't real. It was a dream. It was fake. Not real.

Then again, I didn't really know that Kyle was still alive, did I? Far more seasoned hobos had taken the westbound, after all. And if he had run into trouble on the road, I'd always be too late to save him. The thought was crushing: my chest felt like it was going to collapse as I thought of all the ways he might've met his end on the road, his corpse broken and gray in some ditch, or battered and bloody on the side of the tracks.

Oh, God, please no. Please let him still be alive. Whether in some Bowery flophouse or that place in Storyville, or 'Frisco, or wherever, God, please, just let him be alive. To placate myself, I tried to envision Kyle in these places, bumming around all by himself, safe and happy. The more I thought about that though, the more I wondered if he'd really go through all that effort just to be alone.

Maybe he'd just gone back home.

Would he do that, I wondered? The way he'd described home was always so awful, with his parents constantly breathing down his neck and his mother always harping on him, not to mention that girl they wanted him to date. Even so, there was always a part of me that wondered how bad it could really be. Then I'd think it had to be as bad as he said if he'd left home over it. But now that I knew him so well, I knew that he could be impulsive. So it was totally possible he'd originally left home on an impulse, only to eventually realize that I wasn't even worth sticking around for. Truth be told, I could see it. Part of me found it really irritating that he had a home and a family to go back to, while another part of me felt smug about it, because it turned out he was just a sweet back all along, a rich kid who had simply given up when the road got to be too much for his delicate sensibilities.

Well, fuck him. Wherever he was, I doubted he cared about what he did to me. I bet he didn't even think about me anymore.

I laid there for a while longer thinking about these things and feeling more and more awful. It didn't seem like I was meant to exist in this world, yet my escape attempt had been a failure – why? Did I _really_ fail on my own accord? How though? Did God send Goldy to save me? If so, why? I guessed it was true that I hadn't pursued my faith much, so maybe God wanted me to stick around and do that. Yet it was hard for me to imagine myself living in God's name when I didn't want to live in the first place. Maybe I should've just been happy with the fact that God, unlike everybody else, was apparently determined to hold onto me, even if he was obscure about his reasoning. Maybe he didn't need a reason beyond the fact that I was one of his children and he loved me. I wished I felt the way I thought I should feel about this – overjoyed, grateful, blessed, relieved – but it mostly just made me miserable, because all I could think about was all the people who had left me and how I was going to be alone again pretty soon.

I rolled over onto my side and faced Goldy. Even if I never saw him again after tomorrow, I at least had this moment right now, a soft swatch of time in the middle of the night, him the shepherd and me the sheep, quiet and safe at his feet.


	4. the same troubled waters

**A/N:** Full chapter title is "the same troubled waters through which we carry our time."

* * *

Goldy didn't leave me throughout the rest of my hospital stay. Then when it came time to pay my hospital bill, he even tried to pay it for me, which was horrifying. He was insistent about it too, and I had to argue with him a little to let me pay it (my wallet had been in my pants pocket, luckily). A dollar fifty was a lot of money, and he'd already done so much for me.

I was glad people like him existed though. He was a very special person, and it was possible he didn't even know it. All morning I'd been dreading the moment when we would finally part ways. As we walked out of the emergency room, that time was so imminent I could already feel the gloom that would follow.

Out on the sidewalk, I took a deep breath and said, "I can't thank you enough for helping me. Most people wouldn't have done all that for a stranger. Probably barely anybody, actually. So, um, I just wanted to let you know how much I appreciate it."

"Aw, you're very welcome," he replied, smiling warmly and patting my arm. I thought I would melt in the chilly autumn air. "I just think it's important to help those in need, that's all."

For a second there, I didn't know what else to say, but I knew I had to say something, and fast.

"Is there anything I can do for you?" I asked. "Maybe buy you breakfast?" He had refused to eat any of the breakfast they'd brought me earlier.

"Oh, no, you don't have to do that!" he said, his voice almost melodic.

"I want to though. Please?" I insisted. And God, did I ever want to.

"Well, alright. If you really want to," he said. "Where would you like to go?"

"Oh, um, somewhere along the main stem, I s'pose," I replied, mumbling and touching the back of my neck.

"Okay," he agreed, and we set off for West Madison Street.

It would be a walk. I was glad for that, though I really resented myself for being so desperate to continue spending time with him, especially when he had to know I'd been trying to kill myself yesterday. I told myself I'd better not try to hang onto him after breakfast – that would be _really_ bad. I had to remember that other hobos weren't like me – for most everybody else, being a hobo was about being your own man, not somebody else's. That was the life for those who settled down with a wife and children. But I was barred from that life too – I was an oddity in both worlds, in all worlds. The times I'd felt otherwise had been few and far between.

You'd think I'd know by now that nothing lasts forever.

Only belatedly did I notice that the silence between us felt a little awkward, at least for me. There were things I didn't know here, and the more I thought about that, the more uneasy I felt. What did this man really think of me? That I was just a sad sack, a pathetic charity case?

Biting the bullet, I confessed, "I can't remember all that much of yesterday."

"Oh, really?"

"Well, I mean, I remember being in the emergency room with you, more or less, but before that… I don't know. I don't know how, uh, how you and I met, exactly."

He was looking at me very seriously as he said, "You don't remember any of what happened out on the lake front?"

"No."

That was when he looked away from me, staring at the sidewalk as we continued to walk. "Well, I was just walking down the beach when I saw you out there, swimming to shore. You didn't look like you were drowning or anything, so I was more confused than anything. I tried calling out to you, but you didn't answer," he explained. "Then when you got to shore, you fell right over, which was when I knew something was really wrong. You were shaking like a leaf and cold to the touch. I could barely get you up and moving, you were so weak."

Hearing this relayed back to me was so embarrassing. I squeezed my eyes shut before asking, "So you're saying you didn't get in the water or anything?"

"You mean, did I go in after you?"

"Yeah."

"Oh, no. Like I said, you seemed to be doing alright getting back on your own, so I just… stood there and watched you," he said, trailing off. "You know, I didn't even think it was a person at first; I thought it was an animal or something, since it was so cold yesterday."

In a quiet voice, I foolishly asked the question I wasn't sure I wanted to know the answer to: "So why was I out there then?"

Slowly, he licked his lips, not responding immediately. Eventually, he replied, "You said you were trying to kill yourself."

My shame was impossible to do away with, a sticky, ugly thing that coated my entire body. There was no hiding either – I was now even more exposed in front of him, as if he knew all my secrets, not just that one. How could he not look down on me? He was so perfect and God-like, whereas I was this little black bug, a pitiful, disgusting thing.

"Look, it's okay," he tried to tell me, but I couldn't even look at him until he said, "I know what it's like. Really, I do."

It was his tone that told me he was telling the truth. He wasn't just trying to be nice; he really did know what it was like to want to kill yourself.

Still, I had to ask, "You do?"

"Yes."

He didn't elaborate, which I couldn't say wasn't fair. I didn't want to elaborate myself. It was awful, shameful business spending your days wanting to off yourself. But now that I knew both of us had been in that dark place, I felt there was something that connected us well beyond the circumstances of fate, or the hand of God, or whatever it might have been. Not that that was meaningless either. After all, this person who was so inclined to help the needy had been there on the lake front in my moment of need, and as strange as it made me feel to be a person in need, I couldn't deny it was true. Because yesterday, when I didn't succeed in killing myself for some unknown reason, I had indeed been weak and vulnerable.

And did he not just admit that he once was too?

To be sure, it made me wonder how a man so full of cheer could have ever wanted to die. But I knew appearances could be deceiving; I knew the face people put on to the world could be entirely fabricated. Still, he seemed so genuine, so truly happy.

At any rate, as curious as I was, I sure as hell wasn't going to ask him about it, so I tried to change the topic by asking him when he'd gotten back into town.

"A coupla days ago," he said. "I spent some time visiting my family after the harvest."

"You have a family?" I asked. "As in, a wife and children?"

"Ah, no, I meant my parents and siblings."

"Oh. I see," I said, deeply relieved – of course Goldy wasn't the type to ditch a wife and kids for the road. "So, uh, did you have a nice time?"

"I did! My sister had a baby in June, so I got to meet her. They named her Annabelle, and she's just the sweetest little thing, hardly ever cries either. And good thing that, since her brother was such a fussy baby," he said, laughing a little. "How about you? Did you spend the summer working too?"

"Yeah, working the fields too," I said, unsure what else I could say about this. As if I were fucking drunk or something, I ended up rambling: "I spent the summer with three other 'bos – I guess you could call it a push. Ironically, we stuck together pretty well on the road and only fell apart once we got back in town. So, I dunno… I guess I haven't been coping too well with that. I ain't much of an airdale."

"Ha, me neither. I like people, and I like being around them," Goldy said. "Nothing's worse that standing on the blind for hours on end with no one to talk to."

"Yeah," I replied, feeling really heartened by his response, especially the part about liking people. Maybe he would like me. "One of those 'bos I ended up being very close friends with, and the other I'd been catching out with for four years. I mean, that one's still around; he's just…" I paused, trying to figure out how to word this without implying that Hack was doing something illegal. "Well, he did something so terrible I don't think I can look past it. It was something he promised me he wouldn't do, but he went and did it anyway. Worse yet, he brought his friend who hates me here, and then that guy hunted me down and broke my nose." I was cringing to be going on and on about this shit to a virtual stranger, yet I seemed unable to stop myself. Anxiously, I tried to tie things up: "Things have just been a bit trying lately, I s'pose."

"Goodness, it sure sounds like it!" Goldy exclaimed. "I'm awfully sorry."

"Thanks," I mumbled, feeling my face get hot. I wish I'd just kept my mouth shut.

"Why was your friend's friend so sore with you, if you don't mind me asking?"

Ugh, I wish he hadn't asked that; the truth sounds like such a lie. "He blames me for something my friend did," I explained. "I don't know why; I guess just because he's friends with him and sees him as incapable of wrong." Rolling my eyes, I added, "I just hope I don't run into him again."

Making a sound of disappointment, Goldy shook his head and said, "Awful. Just awful. 'Bos get enough of that from everybody else; it's a shame when we don't even have each other's backs."

"Yeah. Really is."

Neither of us said anything for a moment. The coughing of automobiles and the _clonk-clonk_ of hooves weren't enough to fill the silence.

Mumbling, I said, "Sorry for goin' on about my problems."

"Oh, no, no, trust me, you weren't," he said at once. "Feel free to go on, if you want. I'm more than happy to lend an ear."

While I'd heard this before, I had a real aversion to talking too much, let alone about my fucking issues, because my dad did that shit all the time and I'd decided a long time ago that I never wanted to be like him. I wondered if he just talked to himself now. Drunk and alone in that cabin, rambling like a madman to himself, maybe even talking to Mom…

God.

Desperate to move away from this topic, I pulled the bland line of asking Goldy if he'd read anything interesting lately.

"You know, as a matter of fact, I have," he replied thoughtfully, taking a folded up sheet of newspaper out of his back pocket. "Look at this. A newspaper for hobos, by hobos."

The top of page read _The Hoboes Jungle Scout_. It was all text, no photos.

"What's this, stuff about jungles?" I asked.

"Well, no. It's a newspaper like any other, with articles on different things. I think the title is more about the exchange of information that goes on at jungles, not jungles themselves," he explained. "This is the latest issue – the first one came out in May, and then they put one out last month too. How's the one behind it, so here's hoping it'll stay on its feet, maybe even expand – there are a lotta hobos who can write and lots more with opinions!"

Problem was, all the opinionated 'bos had all the same opinions. I found their radical drivel tiresome and the things they did in its name even worse. That said, if this publication was backed by How and the IBWA, the rhetoric was likely more moderate – I could tolerate hearing about Marxism at the Hobo College, not so much from some bakehead Wobbly on the street corner.

"Anything in there you found particularly interesting?" I asked Goldy.

"Actually, yes. A little piece I've been mulling over lately," he said, flipping the page over. "Wanna hear?"

"Sure."

"It's called 'Our Mother Chi'," he said and began to read: "Like a child running back to his mother after play, the hobo returns to Chicago every fall. There are reasons for this, and they are good ones. We all know them. But as I bum around the main stem in the warm autumn sunshine, I cannot help but think of winter – Mother's wrath yet to come. We will walk up and down these streets trying to keep warm, the winter wind whipping our faces, and we will crowd into the mission houses, professing ourselves to be 'converted' for a free cup of java. I do not look forward to it – I am older now, and the cold feels colder. While I have thought of doing like the birds and spending winter in the South, I know I will spend the winter here regardless. The truth is, I cannot imagine leaving Mother Chi: as harsh as her winters are, she has a place in her heart for the hobos, tramps, and bums, and that can be said of precious few."

Not wanting to express a contrary opinion, I asked him, "What did you find interesting about it?"

"Well, it made me think of how even when you know something bad is coming down the line, most people just won't think about it if things are good in the present," he said. "But this writer takes solace in the inevitability of winter – he's accepted it."

That really impressed me. Goldy was even smarter than I had initially thought.

"That sounds about right," I agreed, adding, "I haven't thought about winter at all. I can hardly even think about tomorrow."

I hadn't meant anything by that, but Goldy's response was shockingly serious: "It's hard, isn't it? It's as if tomorrow – and every day thereafter – is just a filled-in black square on your calendar. You can't conceptualize the future anymore, and the sad thing is, you don't even care."

"That's… exactly what it's like," I said, looking at him in amazement.

He smiled at me weakly and said, "Is there anything I can do to help though?"

"Oh, God, no – you've already done so much. Besides, I know what I have to do to help myself. The trouble is, I'm just… not good enough to be good at it, I s'pose," I said, failing to articulate myself. "What I mean is, what I'm trying to do ought to be enough to help me, but it just doesn't feel like it, I guess because I lack the strength of character to do it very well." Mumbling, I followed that idiotic spiel up with, "That probably sounds stupid, but that's just kinda where I'm at right now."

"What is it you're trying to do?"

Embarrassed, I looked down and actually admitted the truth: "Basically just… living my life in God's name. I s'pose."

His reply was absurdly enthusiastic: "That's wonderful!" he exclaimed, and I looked at him with eyes as big as dinner plates. "So how are you going about doing that?"

"Well, uh. By quittin' drinking, for one thing. And just… havin' faith, I s'pose. Maybe going to the mission houses s'more, I dunno." I replied, mumbling. "It's sad, but I think my problem is that I just can't wrap my head around what God would want with somebody like me."

"Because you're His child, and the Heavenly Father loves all His children," Goldy simply said. "I understand where you're coming from though. It's impossible for us to grasp just how much God loves us, even more so when we don't love ourselves very much, or when it feels like the whole world is against us. That doesn't make God's love for us any less though. That's why we have to have faith in Him, so we don't stop feeling that love in our hearts."

I almost wanted to cry – Goldy knew exactly where I was coming from. It was so different than being preached to at the mission houses.

"It's hard," I admitted. "I'm tryin' to have faith, but I just keep falling back into this pit of despair. Bad thoughts seem to just… take over my brain."

"I know what you mean. It's like, hmm… Darkness takes over your mind, and dispelling it seems impossible. You don't even want to. You just keep cycling back to what brought you there in the first place."

"Yeah, exactly," I eagerly agreed.

It was amazing, how keenly he understood this hell. And not only that, but he had the words to describe it. It was such a relief, even exciting, as somber as the subject matter was.

"Yeah. It's horrible. Horrible and very, very lonely," he said. "But the longer you embrace that darkness, the further you push God away."

"I don't want to do that, but I…" I paused for a good few seconds before saying, "I don't know how to get out of it."

"Well, right now your faith is being tested. So what that means is, the Heavenly Father is giving you the chance to restore it. Think of it like rebuilding a house that's burned down. The foundation is still there, but you have to start over. And yet, look around you," Goldy said, gesturing towards the shops that lined the street. "You'd never know that forty years ago, a fire burned much of this city to the ground."

"No, you wouldn't," I agreed.

"But Chi rebuilt. And so can you."

"How though?"

"Well, there are lots of ways to build faith: prayer, reading scripture, doing good deeds, making good decisions. Following the commandments," he said. "One thing that helped me was identifying when I start having bad thoughts and deciding to pray instead. I'd ask the Heavenly Father for the strength to _have_ faith."

"Did it work?"

"Not immediately… At first, I felt that the Heavenly Father owed it to me to pull me out of my misery. It was unfathomable to me that He had let what happened happen, and I'm embarrassed to admit that I felt He ought to make amends for it. Appallingly enough, my first prayers were very demanding. My bitterness had made me entitled. Eventually, it dawned on me that I didn't even trust God anymore."

Hearing that was what made me see how incredibly human he was – he was a man like me, who had suffered like me. Unlike me, however, he had the faith, wisdom, and conviction that I so sorely lacked. Maybe not always, but he had them now, and that gave me the hope that maybe one day I would too. Still, I needed light to nourish the seeds of my renewed faith that had been planted by the Bible Rescue Mission. I was a baby plant leaning lopsided toward the sun, and though I felt pathetic and small for latching onto Goldy like this, now I didn't know how I could ever let him go. Even the thought of it disturbed me.

Worrying about that just seemed to make time go faster though, and before I knew it, we'd made it to the main stem.

Then as we headed to Messinger's, it also occurred to me that I might see a number of people here I didn't want to deal with. Craig and Hack were at the top of that list, though I definitely didn't want to run into Mole or Old Fuzzy, either. So I kept my eye peeled as we headed to the lunchroom, trying not to be obvious about it as I moved my head to scan the area. Luckily, I didn't see any of them.

Inside Messinger's was safe, but not really. The way the waiter stared at my face made me wish somebody would just shoot me. And he wasn't the only one staring – other people were too, including an old tramp and a young 'bo sitting at the end of the bar. I tried to turn away from them, but since Goldy was sitting to my right, I couldn't use my eye patch as a shield. So I hung my head and just prayed they'd stop and mind their own damn business.

In a low voice, I asked Goldy, "So, um. How did you go about trusting God again?"

"Well, first I had to realize that I was letting my own understanding supersede God's," he said, smiling almost sadly. "My thinking was that the Heavenly Father had let something terrible happen, right? But if I were to follow that conclusion to its logical end, then that would mean God sometimes acts unfairly, even cruelly, which isn't true at all." Next, he said something that hit too close to home: "It dawned on me then that my thoughts weren't logical."

I swallowed, just looking at him and wondering what had happened to him. "So then you were able to trust God?" I asked.

"Yep."

"Just like that?"

His smile faded somewhat as he said, "I'd like to say I never thought like that again, but that's not true… I'd get upset when I looked around and saw how much easier other people's trials seemed to be. It didn't make sense to me, and then I'd realize all over again that of course it didn't, because I can never fully understand the Heavenly Father's plan for me."

There was a parallel here to my own thinking, with my consistent doubt that God didn't want anything to do with me as opposed to the _fact_ that God loves all his children. Realizing this though, I began to wonder if there really were other holes in my logic, as much as I didn't feel that was the case. And, for the record, that feeling was based on fact. Because as important as feelings were, facts were important too. Yet recent rebuttals to my beliefs had been launched entirely based on feelings: Kyle had barked at me that I'd gotten away with murder because he found my precautions annoying, and Hack had tried to tell me coke wasn't illegal because he wanted to keep selling it. Still, I wondered, were other people regularly accused of being crazy? Was it because I had spent so much time around crazy people, or because I myself was crazy?

It was hard to say. Thinking about it made my head spin.

The waiter came by with our food. Goldy got pancakes and eggs, and I just got some toast, not so much because I was hungry but because I didn't want to deal with getting hungry later. We started eating, me far more languidly so as to prolong my last moments with Goldy.

What the hell was I going to do with myself after he left me? Really, I just wanted to sleep. Getting plastered and curling up in my own little cubby at a cage hotel sounded pretty good right now. Except, shit, I wasn't supposed to drink anymore. God damn it.

"What denomination of Christianity are you, Swarm?" Goldy asked.

"Oh, um, Catholic, I s'pose."

Before I could ask him the same, he smiled a little and said, "You s'pose?"

"I mean, I was raised Catholic and got some of the sacraments, but I haven't been to mass in… awhile," I admitted. The last time had been my mother's funeral. In my defense, I added, "Sometimes I go to the mission houses though."

"So your beliefs don't align one way or the other?" Goldy inquired.

"I guess not," I said, going on to admit, "I honestly don't know all the differences between the types of Christianity. I've always just sort of assumed they believe in all the same important stuff though."

"And what do you think that stuff is?" Goldy asked.

I wasn't entirely sure why he was quizzing me on this, but he just seemed curious to know what I thought, so I tried my best to summarize what I perceived to be the "main points" of Christianity: that Jesus died for our sins and was resurrected three days later; that there was one God made up of God, Jesus, and the Holy Spirit; and that you had to believe in God if you wanted to go to Heaven, otherwise you went to Hell. Afterwards, I paused, remembering that the Jews didn't believe in Jesus. Somehow, I'd never considered that.

"What if I told you there's more to it than that?" Goldy said.

"What do you mean?"

"I mean that parts of the Bible were removed and many truths were lost."

"Oh, you mean over time?" I asked.

"Yes."

At that moment, the waiter came with our check, which I took and paid for, feeling unduly anxious as I plucked nickels and dimes from my limp wallet.

With that out of the way, I went straight back to the topic: "So you were saying…? About, um, things being lost?"

"Right. So, the Bible is missing some very important things," he said, but instead of going on, he stopped and surveyed the crowded restaurant. "Would you like to go somewhere quieter to talk?"

Honestly, he could've asked me to jump off Niagara Falls in a barrel and I would've said yes.

As per my suggestion, we headed to Bum Park. Outside, it was slightly warmer than before, but it was still cold and a bit windy. I had the idea for us to drink first to warm up, until I remembered again about the stupid alcohol.

"So, as I was saying," Goldy began, "the Bible is actually missing some plain and precious truths. That means that most Christians today are reading an incomplete version of th—"

Just then, an old, one-armed ky wah inserted himself in front of us and said, "Oi lads! You two written your mother lately?" In his dirty fist, he held about a dozen freshly sharpened pencils that were splayed out like turkey feathers.

Christ, I fucking hated these guys.

I was already trying to walk around him when Goldy cheerfully said, "I have to admit, not in a while!"

With seedy persuasion, the old man said, "So why not buy a pencil and write her a nice letter? I'm sure she misses you terribly. Just think of how happy it'd make her to get a letter from her dear son."

"You know, you're absolutely right. I ought to write to my brother and sisters too," Goldy said with a smile. "How much are you sellin' them for?"

"Well, considerin' these are some of the finest pencils money can buy – they got the smoothest lead you ever seen – I'm barely cuttin' even handin' 'em out for a dime," the ky wah said, which was such bullshit I had to roll my eyes. "And besides, you can't put a price on a smile on your family's faces, can ya?"

"You sure can't!" Goldy replied. "I'll take three."

"What!" I yelped.

Goldy shot me a knowing glance with those breathtaking blue eyes. This non-verbal exchange was so acute it nearly bowled me over. While I didn't want to say it was 'intimate' due to the connotations, that was the best word I could think to describe it. My face got hot, and I hung my head, grateful for the tape over my nose for once.

After scamming Goldy out thirty cents, the ky wah inevitably turned his attention to me: "And how about you, lad? You written your mother lately?"

"My mother is dead," I said, looking him straight in the eye.

That didn't faze him – he'd undoubtedly heard it before and had a response lined up: "Sorry to hear that, sonny. Surely you've got other family out there though, haven't ya? A brother, a sister, maybe an uncle? Or how about your old man?"

Almost instinctively, I let out a hollow laugh. "I'd be surprised if he hasn't drunk himself to death by now," I said, cringing in embarrassment when I heard how callous I sounded. Mumbling with regret, I added, "I don't know my sister's address. Or my uncle's."

"Oh, that's quite alright! So long as you know the town they live in, it'll still get there," the ky wah said. "Trust me on this one."

My insides felt like they were turning to sludge. I didn't want to buy a fucking ten-cent pencil! God, this was so awful, just completely terrible: the ky wah was looking straight at me, pushing these fucking pencils in my face and telling me about the "Great American Post Service" (it wasn't even called that!). And I was trapped, hearing myself say that my sister lived in Billings, Montana, and that no, I haven't spoken to her in years. What I wanted to tell this grubby bastard was that writing my witch of a sister was the last thing I'd ever do, and if he thought that was such a bad thing, then he ought to ask himself how much he'd like a sibling who used to hit him hard enough to leave bruises.

When I couldn't take one more minute of this, I looked to Goldy and silently, desperately pleaded for help.

To my relief, Goldy spoke up and said, "Maybe we'll come back for more pencils another day, sir." Raising the ones he'd purchased, he added, "Thank you very much though! I look forward to writing my family! Now, if you'll excuse us, we have to be on our way. Goodbye, sir, and good luck with your sales!"

"Oh, thank you, sir, and thank you kindly for your purchase," he said, doing a little bow. "Have a nice day now, sir, and you enjoy those pencils."

"Will do!" Goldy said, his tone as genuine as ever. "And a lovely day to you too!"

Now that we were free, I let out a huge breath, taking a moment to just breathe. God, fuck those guys. They were so fucking obnoxious.

"I'm sorry about that," Goldy said.

"What? Why? You didn't do anything."

"I should have gotten you out of there sooner."

This was such an odd statement I barely knew how to respond. "No, it's – it's fine. I'm fine," I stammered. "Don't worry about it. Seriously."

The truth was, I was grateful Goldy got me out of there – I just didn't want him or me to think that I was reliant on him to do so. After all, if he hadn't been there, I would've just ignored the guy. So I suppose he was apologizing for the situation he'd created in which I was forced to stand there and deal with it. Then again, I hadn't really been 'forced'; it was just that social convention was sometimes a terrible thing. Oh, what a thought to have! Might as well start correcting people's grammar and turning my nose up at anything less than the Lexington Hotel.

I asked Goldy, "Why did you buy them if you knew it was a scam though?"

"Well, he clearly needs the money," Goldy said, "and if thirty cents is the difference between him sleeping in a hotel versus out in the cold, then I'm more than happy to hand it over."

"But he's being deceptive," I countered. "Those pencils aren't really worth ten cents."

"That's true," Goldy conceded, "and while maybe it's not the most honest way of making a living – not that I think he's really fooling anyone anyway – that doesn't absolve his need. He's just trying to get by like everybody else."

I just agreed with him, because there was some truth to what he was saying. Still, I thought the ky wahs' harassment and sales pitches ought to be frowned upon, not humored. After all, they were as capable as anyone of doing honest work. I didn't want to argue with Goldy though. In the end, it was clear he was just a better person than me.

When we had just passed Peoria Street, he asked me, "Have you been on the road long?"

"Four years," I said. "You?"

"Wow, that's longer than I would've thought! How old were you when you first caught out?"

"Fourteen."

"Goodness, that's young," Goldy commented, though it really wasn't; there were much younger kids the road. "I left three years ago, when I was thirty-four. Time sure flies, huh?"

"Hold on, you mean to tell me you're"—I quickly did the math in my head—" _thirty-seven?!_ "

"Indeed I am! Born in '76!" he said, laughing. "I've never looked my age. It used to frustrate me when I was younger. People thought my brother was older than me when he's actually five years younger."

"That's wild."

"Isn't it?" he agreed. "Did you say earlier that you have a sister?"

Oh, no.

"Uh, yeah, I do. She's six years older than me. Last I heard, she was pregnant with her first kid, and her husband was trying to get his foot in in the oil industry," I said. "It's funny – I was always the good kid growing up, but now she's the good one and I'm the bad one."

"Why are you the bad one?" he gently asked.

"Oh, you know, just… bein' a dirty bum 'n all that. Not settlin' down and startin' a family." And killing a cop, and running from the law, and being sexually inverted. The list went on.

"You're not a dirty bum," Goldy said. "You worked all summer, didn't you?"

"A dirty hobo then."

"So take a bath?" he said, his tone slightly amused. "It sounds like you're being a little hard on yourself, don't you think?"

"I guess," I said with a shrug, though in reality I felt I had a pretty reasoned grasp on the fact that I was terrible. That said, not settling down and starting a family was pretty low on the list of reasons why, and so I told Goldy I wasn't as bothered by that as I had perhaps conveyed. "It's just not in the books for me, I s'pose… I feel like I always have to be on the move. I just can't manage in one place for very long – it drives me nuts. I'm practically bursting at the seams to get out of Chi by the time spring finally rolls around."

"Yeah, that's always the worst shack fever. I suppose when you spend so much time on the move, it starts to feel like something you have to do. Maybe it also has something to do with everything on the road being so ephemeral… One day, you spend ten hours on the blind with a man you come to see as a friend, the next you're having mulligan stew at the local jungle with a bunch of 'bos you'll probably never see again. It's always onto the next berg, the next job, Chi being the sole exception. So it seems that writer had a point in calling it 'Mother Chi,' huh?"

As usual, everything he was saying was desperately true, and God, was it depressing. Kyle and even Hack were just like Waxtooth McGee, Dr. Bones, Sacramento Sal, and countless others we'd met along the way – 'bos I'd caught out with, or talked to at a saloon, or met at a jungle, flophouse, or freight yard. They were men who had come into my life for a glimpse of time only to leave within a few hours or days to go their own way, usually without incident. Where Hack and Kyle were distinct was irrelevant, because in the end, our togetherness wasn't permanent either. We might've been close enough to ride the rails together for months or even years, but all you had to do was take the pin out of the link and the coupler fell apart.

No train car is ever truly bound to another.

* * *

There was already a decent amount of hobos loafing around the park, and we couldn't find an empty bench, so we chose a spot at the edge of the park under the trees. The trees were spaced such that we could each have our backs to one while facing each another and still be close enough to have a normal conversation. Goldy was leaning forward, his arms over his knees and his head slightly lowered, resting for a moment.

God, he was beautiful. It was almost overwhelming facing him head-on. His hair looked so soft, and his long fingers were so pristine, like a Renaissance sculpture.

When he looked up at me and smiled, I was so enraptured by his warmth I could hardly breathe. Completely arrested, I tried my best to smile back, at least until the compulsion to hide my face overwhelmed me.

"Do you still want to hear about the Bible?" he asked, and I instantly said yes, of course. So he picked up right where he'd left off, sounding quite confident as he explained, "So, as I was saying, the Bible is missing some very important things. These aren't just minor details either, but big things. Important things. They were lost for a bunch of different reasons – accident, translation errors, or worst of all, purposely removed by wrongdoers wishing to pervert the right ways of the Lord.

"You can think of it like reading a novel with thousands of words edited out from the original manuscript – you'd be reading a version with missing information, information that the author felt was important but the editor didn't. That actually happens a lot in publishing, believe it or not. And the thing is, you wouldn't even know it; you'd just assume that was the way the novel was meant to be." Next, he asked me, "What's your favorite novel?"

" _White Fang_ ," I confessed, knowing that a London book was incredibly cliché.

"So, if the editor had cut out a lot of important stuff, you'd probably want to read London's original version, right?"

"Mm, yeah, I s'pose so."

"Well, likewise, the Heavenly Father wanted us to have the complete version of the gospel," he said. "He saw how men had distorted His word and made changes in the Church, even going so far as to establish new churches. People were worshipping false gospel under a false priesthood, most of them without realizing it. So what God did was, he chose a prophet to restore the gospel of Jesus Christ and His Church to the earth."

"Wait, so, when did all this happen?" I asked, thinking it was the Middle Ages or something.

"What, the Great Apostasy or the prophet?"

"Both, I guess?"

"Well, the Apostasy lasted from after the deaths of Jesus and the Apostles until the prophet Joseph Smith's First Vision in 1820."

"1820?" I repeated, thinking he must have gotten the year wrong.

He paused for a moment before asking, "Have you heard of the Jesus Christ Church of Latter-Day Saints?"

Oh.

Oh, God.

"Um, yeah," I replied. "I mean, I've certainly heard of it; I just don't know much about it."

"What've you heard about it?" he inquired politely.

"Oh, I don't know," I said, though my brain was screaming POLYGAMY and SHAM. "Just, you know, that you guys are super friendly and, um, live in Utah."

"That's very kind of you to say!" he said, though I really hadn't meant it as a compliment.

Honestly, I was somewhat on edge now. Originally, I had originally been under the impression we were having a conversation mostly about history. I had no idea what to make of the fact that this incredibly kind and intelligent man was a follower of some nutty religion based off some guy's stolen novel. It was utterly confounding. I couldn't make sense of it.

Goldy went on to tell me this insane story about a man named Joseph Smith who lived in New York a hundred years ago and wasn't sure which religion to follow. After asking God for help, God and Jesus appeared to him and told him that all the religions were wrong and that he shouldn't join any of them. Later on, an angel named Moroni told him to dig up these gold plates that were buried on a hill, and then Joseph Smith used this special stone to translate what was written on the plates into English. It turned out that what was written on them was the "sealed" book mentioned in the Book of Isaiah and contains the fullness of the gospel as was delivered by God to the ancient peoples of America. And, by the way, those "ancient peoples" weren't Native Americans but rather a group of Israelites who had sailed to America, where Jesus appeared and converted them to Christianity.

Now, I could buy that a man named Joseph Smith really had seen God and Jesus, and I could even buy that an angel had had him dig up gold plates and divinely translate what was on them, but ancient Israelites coming to America sounded a bit sketchy.

"So when did those people come to America?" I asked, trying to sound merely inquisitive.

"Around 600 B.C., I believe."

"Oh, okay," I casually replied. "I guess my teacher didn't know about that – she told us Columbus was the first to sail to America."

He laughed a little and said, "Well, that's what a lot of people think! But see, that's what happens when records get lost. The truth as we know it is written down based on the information we have available, not on stuff that's been lost, you know? So we're very fortunate that Moroni buried the gold plates so the Heavenly Father could have Joseph Smith find them and translate them."

"Wasn't Moroni that angel?"

"Oh, he was. But before that, he was a prophet living in America. He was the one who finished writing the plates and buried them. Then when he died, he became an angel whose task it was to guard them."

"So all those ancient people died out in the end?"

"No, not all of them," he said, going on to clarify that there had been four different groups of Israelites in America. Ultimately, however, the wicked, dark-skinned Lamanites defeated the righteous, light-skinned Nephites. The Lamanites were the ancestors of the Indians.

I was really struggling to suspend my disbelief and entertain the possibility that all this was true. It just really seemed like a matter of history, not faith, to say that ancient Israelites had come to America. I mean, I guess it _could_ be true – I did know that information could be lost to time – but it seemed strange to me that the only ones who had found it out were Mormons, not archaeologists or something. And I felt guilty for that; I felt _bad_ that I was sitting here questioning Goldy's faith, when what I wanted was to be swallowing it unquestionably.

I guess it all just boiled down to wanting him to like me.

So I sat and listened and asked questions. For hours. Truth be told, there was something fascinating about these crazy stories, not to mention Goldy's rampant enthusiasm for them. What was less crazy was what daily life was like for the Latter-Day Saints, how they went to church and prayed to God just like any other Christian. They also believed in something called continuous revelation, which meant that God was always revealing new information to them, such as, for example, that they didn't need to take multiple wives anymore. There were personal revelations too, when you knew that God was talking directly to you. That, I had to admit, was something I was desperate to experience again.

Now, I knew I was probably beginning to focus more on the positive attributes of the Latter Day-Saints movement so as to better ignore the weirdness of the Book of Mormon, but there had to be _something_ to it if someone like Goldy was a believer, right? Plus, when I thought back on everything he'd before, it made so much sense, and his viewpoint had been informed by his religion, had it not?

As I considered these things and listened to him talk about the Word of Wisdom, I was actually struggling to keep my eyes open. I had no idea why I was so tired. I guess from yesterday still.

Yet my droopy eyelids flew right open when Goldy suddenly said, "Oh, I almost forgot! Didn't you say you were trying to quit drinking?"

"Uh, yeah. Yeah, I… did," I awkwardly managed to reply.

"And how's that been going for you so far?"

Touching the back of my neck and looking away, I said, "Oh, alright, I s'pose." I didn't mention that I had only started the other day. "Why?"

"It's just that, well, it can be hard, you know," he said, and I knew at once that he was again speaking from experience. "And it doesn't help when you're surrounded by temptation."

"That's true."

"So have you… struggled at all?"

"Well, I, uh, I can't say I have," I said, forcing myself to admit, "I only started the other day."

"Oh! Is that all?" he said with kind incredulity, but I felt silly anyway. "Well, you have to start somewhere, right?" he added, patting me gently on the shoulder. After a pause, he carefully said, "So, let me propose something to you. Now, I don't know where you've been staying, and I imagine this'll probably run you a few cents more, but one thing that's helped me is staying at the Salvation Army hotels. You know, since you can't be under the influence there."

In our shared gaze, his clear blue eyes so intently looking into mine, there was a profound mutual understanding that I don't know if I'd ever felt before. He knew this struggle, not just with alcohol, but the greater one, this darkness that was always dragging me back down into this pit, where the light was so far away and so impossible to reach, a thing that belonged to other people. He was also saying that he didn't think I was weak for struggling, no more than he thought he himself was weak, because how can you fault a man for adapting to his anguish when he's trapped with no way out? In that pit, I had the words of hope but not the means, but here Goldy was offering me the means, and all that was left was for me to take them.

And of course, I did.

* * *

The Beacon Hotel was a drab, three-story building along a thankfully unremarkable stretch of South State Street, between the clutches of the vice district to the north, where the burlesque shows and vaudeville houses entertained people like Hack and worse, and to the south, the colored part of town and what was left of the Levee. While the hotel was no shining beacon in the late gray morning, it did feel safe, a place of comfort and welcome in a city that had little of that for people like us.

I decided to pay for a week upfront, a seventy cent fee, which felt bad after having already spent a dollar fifty on my hospital bill, not to mention the doctor's fee the other day. I didn't bother reminding myself that I'd saved a ton of money by Hack having paid my room and board the past month, since that son-of-bitch had the means only because he deceived me, implicating me by association without so much as a goddamn care.

Behind the front desk, there was a sign that said "NO ALCOHOL OR DRUNKENNESS PERMITTED ON PREMISES." At the bottom, someone had amended in pencil, "NO DRUGS EITHER." Reading that here and now felt far more accusatory than palliative, and it did make me feel ashamed, as if this clerk knew our motivations. As he articulated the sign's decree to me, the most I could do was nod, and only barely that.

There was another thing I noticed in the lobby, something that you just didn't see in your average flophouse: a wall phone. In front of it was a stool with a city directory on it. I was staring at it for so long that I had spaced out when the clerk was trying to give me my key.

My room was #11, and Goldy's was right across the hall, #3. He said he was going to rest himself, which I felt awful for since I knew it was because he slept in an uncomfortable rocking chair last night. I couldn't seem to make an apology come out of my mouth though; I didn't seem to be able to do much of anything when he smiled at me like that, so sweetly and sincerely. As much as I was desperately relieved we were staying in the same place, I couldn't help but worry: what if I couldn't control myself and ended up attaching myself to him like a goddamn leech? Maybe that was already happening. But then, Goldy had more or less invited me here, hadn't he? He must have felt sorry for me though, which about as bad as my fear that I was leeching off him.

But what could I do?

I drew the curtains of my window, shrouding the space in a gray dimness. It was just then that I heard an El train rattle by, behind the building. Those were people who were going places, doing things, leading real lives. Maybe even going to class at the University of Chicago. And here I was in this Salvation Army hotel, beating myself to a pulp over who I was to the saint of a man across the hall, the one who I was depraved enough to wonder if he was perhaps not normal either. It was such an awful thing to even think, and I tried to stop, hell, to stop thinking about him at all, but I couldn't.

Why was he on the road? What was the terrible thing that had happened to him? Maybe he was framed, or maybe there had been an accident he was blamed for. There were so many possibilities, but it would've been rude to ask – you really weren't supposed to ask another 'bo why he was on the road. I had to be careful not to seem curious, otherwise everything was going to go up in flames, as usual.

I was still just standing there in middle of my room thinking these things when I decided I ought to get in bed. God, I was fucking exhausted, and the half hour walk over here didn't help either. After kicking off my boots, I went to the locker to put my bottle of aspirin inside, as there was no nightstand. In it, I found a green pamphlet with a printed red illustration of a woman holding a flag on it, leading the way from an expanse of factories whose black smoke polluted the air. The title read _Industrial Unionism: the Road to Freedom._

Yeah, sure it is.

Disdainfully, I flipped through the pages, but I stopped when my eye caught sight of a passage highlighted in italics:

" _The working class and the employing have nothing in common."_

For the first time, I began to wonder if maybe that was true.


	5. the best i can

My eye patch was a disguise, but it also exposed me, in a way. A black hole on my face, it paralleled the darkness in my mind, a vortex that sucked all the good in and darkened it. And though the whole thing was of course a sham, my eye patch felt like it was a part of me, just like my darkness was a part of me. I didn't feel right or safe without it.

But I often didn't feel comfortable with it, either. Since my eye patch drew such attention, the rest of my face was forgotten. That was obviously a good thing, but it sometimes made me feel like a freak, even though missing body parts weren't uncommon amongst hobos. When I felt someone's eyes on me, I sometimes just wanted to rip the eye patch off and say, _"Fuck off, it's a disguise!"_ But then, of course, I'd be exposed, the questions would start rolling in, and I'd look even worse.

Lately, this feeling of freakishness had been magnified by my broken nose. I'd gone from being seen as strange and unfortunate to utterly monstrous. And though by now, the swelling had gone down a good deal, it didn't even matter because the bruising had really begun to set in, marring my skin with deep purple splotches. Looking at myself in the mirror made me hate myself and then made me hate Hack for bringing this hell down upon me.

God, that reprehensible son of a bitch, the way he'd tried to fucking argue with me against his own guilt when I'd caught him red-handed. It was unbelievable, and so, so selfish. It was all about the money for him, wasn't it? Some fucking hobo he was.

On top of all that, not knowing the fallout made me anxious as hell. I wondered what people were saying about me, especially Craig, who was a massive threat to my safety, even back when he'd been holed up in Tennessee. And again, it was all Hack's fault.

My protector, my deceiver.

And after so many years too…

The weight of it all was too much to bear, so I just continued to let it crush me. My eye in the mirror was dry; there wasn't any moisture left in me. Everything was so acute yet so bland, the world gray and paper-like but at the same time incredibly sharp, every breath I took chock-full of monotony. It was intolerable, almost physically painful.

When the knock on the door came, I felt like I'd gotten caught craving what I wasn't allowed to have.

"Swarm?" Goldy asked. "You almost ready?"

"Oh, um, yeah. Sorry, coming."

I checked to make sure there weren't any black hairs on Goldy's razor, then made sure I had everything before heading out the door. Out in the hallway, Goldy was waiting for me, reading the paper.

He smiled at me so warmly I was afraid I might crumble to pieces, like cracked mud under the sun's rays. I just didn't know how to deal with someone as pure and kind as this, and in my nervousness, I fumbled with my key like an idiot trying to lock the door.

Afterwards, I handed Goldy his razor, mumbling, "Um. Thanks."

"Don't mention it," he said with a smile. "Lemme just throw this in my room, then we can go."

"Okay."

When he came back out, he showed me a cartoon on the front page of the paper.

"Looks like winter might be here already," he said.

It was an illustration of Old Man Winter coming through a window and prodding a frightened man in the chest, saying, _"See who's here!"_ A startled woman yelped behind him.

"I sure hope not," I said. "I've had enough long winters for one lifetime."

"Yeah?"

"Well, where I'm from, it'll snow from around October-November up into April, even… I mean, I guess that's not too bad, but it always felt like it lasted forever being cooped up in the house and all," I said as we were leaving the building, a cold breeze slapping me in the face. Thank God I'd gotten a new hat and coat yesterday.

"This is up in Montana?" Goldy asked.

"Yeah. How did you know?"

"You told the ky wah yesterday your sister lived there."

"Oh, right," I said. "Yeah, she, uh, moved out there from our little town down in the Bitterroot Valley. She always hated living in the country." I didn't really want Goldy to inquire about my life back then, so I asked him, "So where are you from, abouts?"

"Take a wild guess."

"Err. Utah?"

"Salt Lake City, born and raised," he pleasantly replied, flashing me a smile as bright as a shooting star and gone just as fast. "Lovely town, if you've ever been. Most of my family still lives there."

"Oh, nice," I said. "So you just got back from there?"

In response, Goldy told me a little more about his trip back home, saying that he had four siblings, two brothers and two sisters, three of which were married and had families of their own. What hung in the air unspoken was _why_ the two of us had left home. It seemed Goldy had something to hide as much as I did, or at least that was the feeling I got. Because it was strange, wasn't it? How could a man who cherished his family so much, who had such faith in God and such goodness in his heart, ever just up and leave?

What _happened_ to him?

* * *

The saloons weren't open yet, but they were calling my name as we went down the main stem. When I looked inside one of them and saw all that liquor behind the bar, my heart broke. I imagined smooth, amber whiskey being poured into a glass and handed over to me, that harsh yet welcomed taste in my mouth, the warmth that would soon encompass me. It was so cold today too, and though the wind wasn't as bad it could've been, it only made things worse.

Sobriety had left me vulnerable, unable to contend with the cold, with taking another breath without feeling like the whole world was falling apart. The constancy and sharpness of it all was just too much. I wasn't strong enough for this. I wasn't Goldy, with his enduring optimism and inherent goodness, whose will was stronger than mine, faith greater, heart kinder.

He asked me if I was alright. I lied, but apparently I didn't put enough effort into convincing him, because he looked at me with this strange sadness before offering me a weak smile and patting my shoulder.

"Maybe you'll feel better once you eat something," he said.

I doubted it, but conceded by saying, "Yeah, maybe."

G & D's Lunchroom, a dim but clean place I'd actually never been to, was sparse in the lull between the breakfast and lunch rushes. Just as soon as we went in did Goldy notice the person we were here to meet, a well-groomed young man probably a little older than me, sitting at a table in the corner by the window.

"Hello again!" Goldy greeted him. "I hope you weren't waiting long."

That our tardiness was totally my fault had my empty stomach lurching with guilt, an apology ready to spill out, but the young man said:

"Don't worry, I only just g-got here." Glancing at me with a pleasant expression, he said, "You brought a friend?"

"Ah, yes, I hope that's alright?" Goldy said before taking a seat. "He said he might be interested in contributing to the paper."

"Of course it's alright. I'd lo-love to hear his thoughts," the young man said, giving me a brief yet polite smile.

That was when it occurred to me he wasn't stuttering out of nervousness; he actually had some sort of speaking problem.

"Oh, no, I don't really have any; I just thought it might be kind of, uh, interesting to hear a little more about it, I s'pose," I struggled to explain. "Um… My name's Swarm, by the way."

"Well, it's nice to meet you, Swa-swa-swar— _Swarm_ ," the young man said, and that really killed me, just how much effort he had to put into verbalizing my stupid moniker. "My name's Jimmy."

As I shook his hand, I heard myself blurt out, "I'm sorry."

"What? Why?" Jimmy asked.

"N-nothing. Never mind," I quickly muttered, grabbing the back on my neck and digging my nails into the skin to punish myself. "Sorry."

Goldy laughed a little before declaring, "Well! Let's see what they have here, hmm?"

God, why the hell did I let Goldy convince me to come to this thing? I was a third wheel here, an intruder. These two had things in common, intellectual things, and it went without saying I had nothing to contribute. Sighing, I hung my head as I looked over the menu, determined to keep my mouth shut but also sort of considering just leaving.

After we ordered, they started talking about _The Hoboes Jungle Scout_.

"It's an interesting blend of amateur journalism," Jimmy noted. "There's this kind of personal familiarity to it that you just don't see in more formal publications."

In response, Goldy said, "Yeah. Hmm, would I describe it…? It's like its casual nature makes it easy and fun to read. There's something unique about it, for sure. It caters to its audience perfectly, giving hobos a chance for their voices to be heard." Shooting me a quick smile, he told me, "You know, Swarm, I have a funny feeling you'd make a great reporter. You have an interesting way of looking at things."

"Oh, well, thanks, but, uh. I still don't know if I'm gonna write anything," I mumbled. "Sorry."

"Oh, that's perfectly fine – don't feel like you have to," Goldy said, winking at me, which, much to my horror, made me blush.

Our food arrived then, a spectacularly wet roast beef sandwich for me with a side of corn. Eating it was a pretty unpleasant endeavor, and washing it all down with water instead of booze made it even worse.

"So, Goldy," Jimmy began, "how did you enter the wo-world of journalism? Did you study at a school beforehand, or just jump in?"

This solidified what I'd begun to suspect, that Goldy had been a career gentleman before hitting the road.

After swallowing his food, Goldy thoughtfully replied, "I didn't have any experience beforehand, if that's what you're asking – just graduated high school. I started out as a cub reporter for the _Deseret News_ , and they'd send me out to get the local news, fires and accidents, cats stuck in trees, that sort of thing. Not front page stuff, you know." He went on to say: "Working in a newsroom is so exciting though – I really miss it sometimes. Something is always happening, and you're always the first to hear it. It's incredibly lively, never a dull moment!"

Jimmy seemed utterly engaged in this, nodding away and taking notes, but all I could do was think about how Goldy had lost all this. He even said he missed it.

"So then, let me ask you this, and p-please, give me an honest answer," Jimmy said. "Do you think it's a waste of time for a journalist to get a college de—d-d-d-degree?"

"Well, no, I'm sure it can probably help – I know a couple guys who went. One for English, the other I don't know what for," Goldy said. "Why, are you thinking about it?"

"Oh, I'm in college already, actually," Jimmy said. "Studying Political Science at UoC."

"The University of Chicago?" I interjected to ask.

"Yep," Jimmy said.

My need to know was so burning, I couldn't help but blurt out: "Have you ever seen a kid there with red curly hair? About this tall?"

Jimmy's brow crinkled as he said, "I don't think I know anyone like that, sorry."

"I see," I said.

"Is he a f-friend of yours?" Jimmy asked me.

Wildly uncomfortable now, I mumbled, "Well, something like that, yeah."

There was an awkward silence before Jimmy began talking about how he'd ended up at UoC instead of Northwestern, to which his prep school was affiliated. That was what really made me stop and wonder what the fuck this rich kid was doing hanging out in Hobohemia.

What mattered to me more was Kyle though. What did it mean that Jimmy hadn't seen him at school? I guess it depended on the size of the school. I supposed a university was much bigger than even a city high school, and maybe Jimmy and Kyle weren't in the same year, either. Or maybe I was just trying to convince myself that Kyle was safe and sound here in Chi instead of getting taken advantage of out on the road.

In the end, I guess I really just had no way of knowing.

God, I should've just gone after him. Why the hell didn't I? Fuck, I'm so stupid.

"Do you feel up for that, Swarm?" Goldy was asking me.

"Huh? For what?"

"For going to a lecture at the Hobo College tonight," he said, smiling weakly.

"Oh, uh, yeah. Sure," I heard myself saying.

The truth was, I didn't want to go to the Hobo College at all; what I wanted to do was get piss drunk and pass out for twelve or more hours. But as long as Goldy was around, that clearly wasn't in the books for me. God, I was such a burden on him – it went without saying he felt personally responsible for keeping me from offing myself again, and that was just the worst feeling. If I were smarter, I would've been mentally preparing myself for when he inevitably got sick of my problems and ditched me, but I didn't even know how to go about doing that.

At that point, Jimmy said he had to get going but would see us tonight at the Hobo College. He stood up, and that was when I noticed he had a cane. That, I thought, was very odd, until I saw the way he walked: almost like a drunk duck, always on the verge of falling over, jerky and uncoordinated, his legs and feet pointed inward. There was something seriously wrong with his legs, maybe from an accident, I didn't know.

To my horror, I realized I was staring, and I had to force myself to look away. The guilt was embarrassing, enough to make my face hot. It was so fucking rude of me, especially when I knew how bad it felt to be stared out. Yet apparently I couldn't stop myself from doing it to someone else, because I was a bad person. Worse yet, I was also incredibly curious as to what was actually wrong with him. I shouldn't have been – it shouldn't have _mattered_ – but I couldn't help it. This guy was a total enigma.

To compound all this, once we got outside, Jimmy bid us farewell, saying his car was parked down by the station, in the other direction.

"You drove here?" Goldy asked, probably thinking the same thing I was.

"Ah, yeah," Jimmy replied, somewhat uncomfortably. "It's just that it would be pretty di-di-difficult for me to take the El to school – campus is about a mile from the nearest station, and those steps can be a real p-pain. So, I, uh, I got a car for school. My father and I adapted it to be totally m-manually operated."

While all that made sense, I sort of wanted to laugh at the way he'd framed it – he got a car "for school" like I used to get new pencils and maybe an eraser for school. The class disparity was glaring enough to be awkward, but then I had some fucking empathy and imagined this poor guy hobbling down the rickety wooden steps of an El station. If anyone deserved a car, it was him. Besides, I'm guessing they didn't want someone who had such trouble walking riding the El anyway, same as they didn't much like colored people riding it.

Anyway, after Jimmy said goodbye, Goldy and I went on walking, though I didn't know where.

"How'd you meet that guy, anyway?" I asked him.

"Oh, at the Hobo College the other day," he said. "We started talking about the newspaper, but then he said he had to get going, so he asked me to meet up later."

"Pretty strange he was there in the first place though, don't you think?" I said. "I mean, he's rich."

"It is strange," Goldy agreed. "I like him, and I've enjoyed talking to him, but you're right, it's strange. My best guess is that he's just interested in hobo politics."

"What, like, socialism?"

"Yeah."

"But why would a rich guy care about that?" I asked.

In response, Goldy said, "Oh, I don't know. I think it's possible to recognize inequality even when it doesn't affect you. That's what philanthropy is all about, isn't it?"

"I guess."

Still, I couldn't help but think about what that pamphlet in my room said: _"The working class and the employing have nothing in common_." And that led me back to thinking about Kyle, wherever he may be, but the thought didn't go anywhere; it simply stopped like it had all stopped back in Pittsburgh, and I just saw his face in my mind and hurt.

A few blocks down the road, Goldy even brought Kyle up, and the coincidence of it all magnified my heartache tenfold.

What he said was: "Do you know somebody at the Chicago College?"

"I don't know," I replied. "I don't know if he's there or not… He's one of the 'bos I caught out with over the summer. All four of us were staying at a mission house in Pittsburgh, and he ditched us our first night there, saying he was gonna catch out on his own. I'm starting to wonder though if maybe he just went back home. He lived here in Chi, you know, and was going to go to that college in the fall, but… I dunno. Maybe he really did catch out on his own. I have no way of knowing." I could feel Goldy looking at me, and it made me nervous. "Sorry."

"Sorry?"

"For ramblin'," I muttered.

He laughed and said, "Oh, Swarm! All I've done is talk your ear off about my faith, and you've been kind enough to listen, so please, go on! I'd be more than happy to lend an ear."

That made me feel a little better I guess. I tried to smile, but ended up touching the back of my neck and looking away.

"Well, that's pretty much all there is to it," I said.

"Is this the 'bo you had a fight with?"

"Well, I did have a fight with him, but he's not the one I told you about – that one's Hack, who I'd been catching out with for four years. This one's Handle, who I became pretty good friends with," I explained. "But with Handle, I don't know if we had a fight so much as he just kinda… exploded at me. It was like he just decided to hate me alluva sudden. I know I should've gone after him, but I really did think he was bluffing about leaving for good. I just… I don't know. This isn't something that would bring me down so much, but I'm real worried about him. He's no seasoned profesh, you know; he ran away from home just in May and was still pretty green last I saw him." Finally, I added, "It just feels so complicated. I can't pull the strings apart and see anything about it clearly."

"Oh, Swarm. You've been through a lot lately, haven't you? I'm awfully sorry – it must be rough," Goldy said with more sincerity than I deserved. "As for your friend, well, I'm sure he'll be alright. And chances are, your paths will cross again someday. The world isn't always as big as it seems, you know?"

His words felt empty to me though, a well-meaning platitude that would never come to fruition. Was it my own cynicism? My own grief? I would have given anything in the world to see Kyle again, to try to make amends with him, but I was just a hobo, with nothing to give.

* * *

That evening, on the way to the Hobo College, we had the displeasure of running into that fucking ky wah again. He and Goldy started talking a little, because of course. As I started getting annoyed, I stopped and wondered if maybe I was just being an asshole thinking about the ky wah and people like him – the crippled, the handicapped – the way I had, especially when people probably thought of _me_ that way due to the eye patch. That wouldn't be the reason I was a freak though, even if I really _was_ missing an eye. Maybe I had judged the old ky wah unfairly, but… I just hated getting hassled in the street. That was what it boiled down to, really.

But then I thought of Jimmy. There was clearly something wrong with him, and I couldn't help wondering what it was. Was it wrong of me to wonder, or was that just human curiosity? Either way, whatever his problem was did affect my perception of him, which probably wasn't good, but it seemed so unavoidable. Maybe I should just try to ignore things like that and remember that regardless of our differences, we were all God's children and should treat each other like siblings.

Well, not like how my sister had treated me, of course.

Anyway, I continued mulling this over as Goldy and I headed to the Hobo College. We walked with our heads down, battling the cold air, my sore nose dripping. It was even colder now that the sun had gone down, just disgustingly frigid for this time of year, and the scarf I'd picked up wasn't doing a thing. Again, I remembered the article Goldy had read to me yesterday, the one about Mother Chi both freezing and sheltering us in one icy breath, as well as the comic from today about Father Winter chilling the daylight out of people. Yet as much as an early winter hurt, it was also tearfully appropriate, my summer having died with my relationship with Kyle.

The blasting warmth inside the Hobo College was no consolation, smelling exactly like what it was: a throng of bums.

Though it was still early, almost every 'bo in Hobohemia seemed to be here to escape the cold, most seated at the maybe hundred or so folding chairs packed into the hall, others standing. You might've thought it really was the dead of winter with the way bums continued piling into the hall, rubbing their half-frostbitten hands together and exclaiming, "Holy _jives_ is it cold out there!"

It occurred to me then that if I'd tried to drown myself just a couple days later, the water probably would've been cold enough to kill me.

Jimmy didn't seem to be here yet, so we sat down and waited for him. Goldy seemed very chipper all of the sudden, maybe because now he wasn't just stuck with me.

"It's a full house tonight!" he said.

I didn't bother saying it was just because of the cold.

Maybe fifteen or twenty minutes later, Jimmy arrived looking frazzled, his cheeks red from the cold.

"I wanted to g-g-get here earlier, but, you know," he said, though I really didn't. Important college course work? $800 car broke down? "Anyway, thanks for saving me a seat!"

It was Goldy who saved him a seat, and Goldy who he sat next to.

All of the sudden I felt really hateful, which I guess was rude, but fuck it. Why was this guy even _here?_ It didn't make any sense – couldn't he go to lectures at his fancy college? The worst thing was though, that Goldy liked him a lot, and now they were chatting away about tonight's lecture on methods for achieving a classless society. Fucking prick! This guy was part of the problem! Just like Kyle and every other well-to-do city slicker, making us poorer while they made themselves richer. Fuckers! I clenched my jaw, stared straight ahead, and silently raged, a red-hot Dutch oven charring its contents blacker than black.

Just then, someone sat down next to me, distracting me for a moment. It was a young man around Hack's age, maybe older, with a big nose, dark curly hair, and bags under his eyes. He looked at me carefully, those exhausted eyes so penetrating that I looked away immediatrly. A few moments later, he took a paperback out of his back pocket and began to read it. When the lecture began a few moments later, he wedged it into the upper V on the side of his chair, beneath the seat.

James How – the so-called "Millionaire Hobo" and founder of the Hobo College – was up at the podium, telling us that unfortunately one of tonight's speakers had yet to show, so they'd go ahead with the other two in the meantime. He knew we all couldn't care less though; everyone was just here for the heat and free food. Unless, of course, you were rich and could get all that and so much more without even lifting a finger; in which case, I guess you were just here out of "academic interest," in which case, you could go fuck yourself.

I wasn't paying much attention to the first lecturer. As far as I could tell, he was a hobo, quite grubby in appearance, with that down-and-out, unshaven face we'd all worn but hated seeing ourselves in. If I had to guess, he was probably some aspiring soap boxer or "freelance author" who'd once managed to get some political ramblings published in a pamphlet. Or hell, maybe he was just some bum off the street who couldn't shut his bazoo, who knew.

After lecturing us in the most aggravating manner possible about brotherhood and having our fellow 'bo's backs (Goldy was nodding along in agreement to that whole spiel), the speaker moved on to denouncing Wobbly tactics, which was at least something I could get behind.

"Tell me, did stirring up violent riots – and that's what they are, riots – in California get them anywhere? Did it abolish the class system? Did it give those men ownership of their labor? Did it so much as even _give those workers fair wages?_ No, of course not!" he argued so dramatically and so excessively that I wondered if he'd spent one too many nights in mission houses. "Violence will only get you one thing: a ticket straight to the jug. And trust me, that ain't worth it, not even on a cold night like tonight." Next, he went on a tangent about "a friend" who had spent some time in the state pen after being convicted of vagrancy, saying it was a madhouse in there and he never wanted to go back. "So for all you thinking maybe them Wobblies know a thing or two 'bout the way things work, I want you to ask yourself how you feel about a jolt in the jug for disturbin' the public peace, or God forbid, _manslaughter_. But you're smart men. You know there's such a thing as peaceful progress."

He turned the stand over to the next speaker, and we all clapped politely as he made his way off the stage.

The next speaker was most certainly not a hobo, wearing a crisp brown suit and fine pair of spectacles, so it didn't surprise anyone when he introduced himself as a "lawyer, writer, speaker, Christian, and socialist" – probably in that order of importance. Then he began his little spiel:

"I'd like to start off by saying that Mr. Farrow made some excellent points – I was especially engaged by his passionate condemnation of the I.W.W.'s foolish methods of 'agitation.' There are a few things I'd like to add though, regarding method. So, I'll get right to it: besides brotherhood and solidarity, by what means can we achieve a classless society? Yes, education is also an important consideration, but for as many James Hows as there are, there are a hundred more completely indifferent to the plight of the working class. And that should be no surprise, given that the exploitative system of capitalism benefits them. Therefore, not only does the bourgeoisie scoff at the notion of giving away money 'for free,' they also have a _financial incentive_ to keep the poor as uneducated as they are poor. Otherwise, the power that comes from their standing within this economic hierarchy would be threatened. It's quite simple, really.

"But what can be done to address the greed of the bourgeoisie? Well, there's only so much the proletariat themselves _can_ do. The fact of the matter is that classless society must be a _universal_ goal, the goal of every single American, proletariat and bourgeoisie alike. It's a matter of ethics, simply put." After a pause, he went on: "At night, the bourgeois man sleeps in his warm bed not thinking of the proletariat man who sleeps on a filthy wooden floor – the wealthy man, so corrupted by his greed, lacks even a morsel of sympathy for his proletariat counterpart. It is unChristian-like; it is unacceptable; and its rectification lies at the feet of the bourgeoisie, who have taken so much but given back so little.

"As a member of that class, my Christian duty is to give back as much as I can to lessen the suffering of the proletariat class. And just as important, I make it my responsibility to convince other members of my class to do the same – the unfortunate truth is that the wealthy are far more inclined to listen to bourgeois appeals than proletarian pleas. _Those_ are my duties on earth and must be the duties of every bourgeoisie, even more so those who call themselves Christians."

I had to say, that was an interesting way of putting it. Even so, I couldn't imagine it was easy to convince rich people to part with their wealth, unless the speaker was extraordinarily convincing. So, when they called for questions from the audience afterwards, I was glad that the man sitting next to me inquired further as to that very point.

In a thick foreign accent, he said:

"You know, even if you vould have your bourgeois friends donate money, it does not matter. We cannot depend upon such a thing, anyvay. Vot we need is a new system, not your charity."

Welp, Wobbly spotted.

"I do agree, sir," the speaker coolly replied. "The capitalist system is as flawed as it is immoral and must become a thing of the past. My duty is to convince the bourgeois of the fact, such that the wealth can be redistributed, allowing a new system to evolve organically."

Yet just as the speaker was about to take the next question, the Wobbly shot back, "Did you not hear a word I said? That changes not'ing! It is still capitalism!"

His eyes narrowed to slips, the lecturer said, "It changes nothing? _Nothing!?_ How can you say that, when Mr. How here gives you a place to attend lectures, to eat and sleep? Out of nothing but the goodness of his heart? He has helped hundreds – no, _thousands_ _–_ of hobos over the years, and you have the _nerve_ to come here and take advantage of that, then turn around and say it does _nothing?!_ Are you mad, sir, or just a bored rabble rouser looking for a fight?"

With a sarcastic scoff, the Wobbly sneered and said, "Alla right, I see how it is. You have the money, so you have the say. But look at yourself – how much did your suit cost? Your shoes, your hat? Now, look at me, look at every man here, and tell us you have redistributed the wealth."

Before anyone could say anything else, Mr. How rose from his seat and tiredly told the Wobbly, "Sir, you can either pipe down, or you can leave."

Every single man in that hall was holding his breath, watching the Wobbly to see what he'd do next. I could sense the rage burning within him, hotter than molten steel boiling in a furnace, than pig's blood spurting from a cut throat – I didn't need to see his clenched fists, the knuckles white, nor hear his breathing, hard and loud in the silence. It scared me a little, that kind of anger, but I also couldn't help looking at him with something like awe – not quite veneration, not magical enough to be fascination. This man was here arguing his case in a place where the odds were stacked against him, where no one would back him up, and the lecturer up there in a nice suit with his fancy college degree was able to make him out to be a thankless idiot, a thoughtless aggressor. It didn't matter how sensible his words were, and it sure didn't matter how many 'bos here secretly agreed with him.

"Fine. Then I vill leave," he declared, but first, he turned his attention to the audience and said: "As for all of you, if you vould let the rich man fool you into supporting the system that oppresses you, you are not'ing but conformists, stupid little blind sheep. And for vot? A hard donut, a col' coffee? There is only one road to freedom, and that is Revolution. So, ask yourself this: do you vant to be emancipated, or do you vant to lick the rich man's table scraps?"

And after he left, I suppose we all did the latter.

He had left a weird mood in his wake though – nobody talked much during the lunch. I guess we were all just thinking about what happened. Wobblies had certainly picked fights in here before, but they were never so convincing as tonight. That didn't mean I thought he was right, just that he'd made some good points. Personally, I didn't really know how a classless society ought to be achieved, or if it were even possible. I just really loved that he'd said all that with Jimmy here.

Anyway, as I was eating, I noticed the Wobbly had left his book behind. I wondered if he'd come back for it? It seemed doubtful at this point. I didn't touch it though. I told myself it was stupid radical drivel and that I didn't care. But I couldn't stop glancing at it every few seconds. The cover was facing the inside, and the back cover was blank. Part of me wanted to pick it up and examine it, but I just went on sipping my java.

When we got ready to leave, most of the 'bos were still around, many of them probably planning on flopping here tonight. But Jimmy had to go home and Goldy said we should get going too, so we were leaving. Jimmy offered to give us a ride back to our hotel, and Goldy excitedly agreed on my behalf. Well, Goldy actually did ask me, but I felt like I had no choice but to say yes. Displeased, I bundled up in my hat and scarf, occasionally glancing over at the forgotten red book and hearing the Wobbly's righteous anger in my head.

I wondered what his story was.

Outside it was unforgiving, as dark and cold as the arctic, and the wind cut through every layer of my clothing. I could still go back and get the book; I still had time. I had to decide now though.

"I'll be right back," I suddenly told Jimmy and Goldy, then dashed back inside the Hobo College.

The book was still there, of course. I snatched it up, barely resisting the urge to look around. The key was not to seem suspicious, to just act like the book was mine and I'd just forgotten it. The Wobbly had left it there anyway, so it wasn't like it was theft. Maybe he had even passed it onto me before leaving.

Back out on the sidewalk, Goldy asked me if I'd gotten everything I needed. I showed him the book.

"That Wobbly left it there, so I, uh, I'm gonna go see if I can find him," I explained.

"Good catch, Swarm!" Goldy chirped. "You're right, we should get him his book back."

"Oh no, I mean, I — it's cold, and I'm sure it won't be hard for me to find him, so you two should go on without me."

"Oh, nonsense," Goldy said, waving his hand. "I'd be happy to help."

I glanced at Jimmy, half-hoping he'd help me out here by urging Goldy along, but he just seemed unsure, looking at Goldy himself.

"Please, it's fine," I begged, knowing I should've expected this, that I should just drop it. "I wanted to talk to him for a while too if I find him, and I don't wanna keep you up. I'll come back to the hotel as soon as I'm done, I promise. I won't be long. Just don't miss out on a ride home for my sake, okay?"

The way Goldy looked at me then, in those grim nighttime shadows, was like having rotting stairs collapse beneath my feet: he looked hurt, confused, but his eyes were still peering at me like he wanted to understand. It was moments like these were it hit me just how bad of a person I was.

Carefully, Goldy asked, "You're sure?"

"I'm sure," I said.

"Well, let me know when you get back, so I know you're safe. I'll be up," he said, which was another slap upside the head, that he cared about my safety.

After that, Goldy left with Jimmy, and I headed in the opposite direction, feeling despicable to the point of downright evil. There was something deeply, deeply wrong with me – should it have been any surprise I had murder on my record too? My God.

I thought of how Goldy had said I should pray when this darkness came over me, but the very thought of that seemed impossible, absurd. It was so dark and cold out, the sky above cloudy and starless, and I had just lied straight through my teeth to the most faithful man on God's gray Earth. The only thing calling my name was a bottle of whiskey I couldn't afford – but what was one more regret upon a pile of so many?

I went to the main stem's crummiest saloon, the one where roaches weren't an uncommon sight. The place was barely warmer than outside, but that wouldn't matter soon. I ordered two glasses of whiskey and went to hole myself up at a table in the corner, away from everybody else.

" _Look at you,"_ a voice in my head said. _"Disgusting, just disgusting. You should be ashamed of yourself."_

Oh, trust me, I was.

The booze was a blessing though. Jesus Christ, was it ever. Everything just felt better with it, less rigid and bland, less pressing. God, being sober was such shit, who could tolerate it? And why was it expected of me, when it was so awful? Maybe I could understand why someone like say, _Kyle_ , with all the blessings and privileges of bourgeois life, might be able to go through life sober, but not me.

I feel like God had to be able to see that.

I put my face in my hands. My chest hurt, whether from the coffee I'd had earlier mixing with the booze, or my broken heart, the jagged edges puncturing me from the inside out. I could've looked up and been in Storyville, or Longview, or any of the places we'd stopped over the summer, seeing Kyle and Hack and Mole all around me, laughing and having a good time. I was happy then, truly happy. Maybe deep down, I knew it wouldn't last, as I'd been afraid was the case the whole time.

There was that day between jobs we stopped at that blue hole in Oklahoma. Me and Kyle were in the water, laughing and splashing, when suddenly I stopped and just looked at him, seeing how the sunlight pouring through the trees lit up his face, his hair, his shoulders, and thinking to myself, how will I ever be able to hold onto something so beautiful? I wanted to kiss him so badly then, but Hack and Mole were there, so I didn't. Now I wondered if things would've been different now if I had, but probably not. I must've kissed him hundreds of times this summer, and he'd _still_ arrived at the callous conclusion that I was crazy. But even if he hadn't – or hell, even if I really _were_ crazy – my love for him just wasn't enough to make him stick around. So all I was left with were the embers of days working by his side in the fields and the whispers of nights in his arms under the stars. Nothing tangible to hold on to, not even the assurance that it had all at least been real.

Had our class differences prophesied this end? Kyle was a spoiled brat, I knew, but he was also an invert, and that didn't make things easy, particularly in the life he'd been prescribed. That, I thought, was another reason he might stick to the road, for the freedom of a life without strings. But I guess that wasn't worth it either. So what was he looking for in life? A college education, a career? Prestige, money? Was that really enough to make someone happy? To make _him_ happy?

That voice in my head echoed: _"The working class and the employing have nothing in common."_

Was that really true though? Suddenly, I wished I really had gone after that Wobbly so I could ask him, but I guessed he would've said yes. That was when I took his book out of my jacket. It was a nice book, a rich red paperback in decent shape. The title, in black letters in a box at the top, read: THE ORIGIN OF THE FAMILY. And the author, in its own black box at the bottom, was: FREDERICK ENGELS. Never heard of him. Some of the terminology that caught my eye as I flipped through it made me think it was an anthropology book, which was sort of surprising.

I knew I really ought to go looking for that 'bo, but what I did was, I downed the rest of my whiskey and went and got another glass.

" _Liar, failure, thief."_

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

" _Coward, murderer."_

I know, I know.

" _Why don't you just go turn yourself in?"_

It was a good question, with a bad answer: because I was afraid. The thought of being put to death by electric chair was terrifying, not to mention having to face the grieving family after denying them justice so long. I just wasn't brave enough. It didn't matter that I knew I could wash the bull's-eye off my forehead simply by catching the U.P. back to Idaho. I just didn't have it in me.

So that was just how it was going to be.

There was no clock in the bar, but I knew I should start heading back soon – it was good half hour walk back to the hotel, and I didn't want to keep Goldy up worrying about me. So, after my fourth glass, I paid my tab and started heading out when I remembered something.

So, I went back in and asked the bartender for a head of garlic.

"A what?" he said.

I looked at him kind of confused. Did I say the words wrong or something?

Swallowing, I repeated, "A head of garlic. Please, sir, I'll pay for it."

"You want a head of _garlic?"_ he asked me.

"Well, just some cloves will do, I guess, but. Yeah."

Maybe this was weird? The good thing was, I was way too drunk to be embarrassed.

In the end, I got a couple cloves of garlic from the kitchen for five cents, which was more than enough for a whole head, but I wasn't about to complain.

Eating raw garlic turned out to be an absolutely vile experience: it was incredibly strong and spicy and made me feel like I was going to throw up. I really hadn't expected it to be that bad. Worse yet, it seemed to ferment in my stomach along with the booze, making me feel sick long after I'd swallowed it. I wasn't able to make it past the second clove – I tossed the rest, wishing I'd figured out some other way to mask my breath. I really, really didn't want to throw up.

So here I was, out in the cold, a good two miles from my twenty-five damn cent flop, plastered out of my mind, about to vomit from eating raw garlic… Words didn't exist to describe this level of pathetic. I almost had to laugh – it was just so damn sad.

What was the point of it all, anyway? I'd exhaust Goldy sooner or later, and he'd go his own way – he was only hanging around me out of pity, and it was only a matter of time before I depleted that. What I ought to do was save him the trouble and just disappear, but I knew I didn't have the guts for that. So I guess my only choice was to await the inevitable.

Sad, sad, sad.

I dipped into another alleyway, knowing I had to be extra careful tonight with how drunk I was. No doubt the town clowns were on high alert lately, what with all the hobos swarming the city looking for shelter. I wasn't a bad one, one of those tramps making the sidewalk his mattress, but I was a worse one, and they all knew it. So far I'd managed to escape detection, but it was October so they had to know I was around here somewhere. Playing right into their hands, I guess. Maybe Chi was my mother too, in a way, and I didn't know what else to do but to contend with her wintery wrath, year after year.

The hotel was just a block over now, so I straightened up, doing my absolute best to seem sober. Casually, I walked past the clerk, totally ignoring him like always, and headed to Goldy's room. But just before I was about to knock, I heard something that made me pause. Inside, Goldy was talking to someone. Which was very odd – who was in there with him? Jimmy? Somebody else?

I could barely make out any of what he was saying, so I shot a glance up and down the hallway before putting my ear to the door.

"Maybe another fifteen minutes," I heard Goldy say. "Then I'll go."

Was he talking about me? For a moment, there was only silence, and I worried about getting caught.

But then, Goldy spoke again: "I worry for him. It's not the same as it was for me; he doesn't have the same resources or support I did… And I can't just tell him what to do, either, you know? He's not my son."

Now I was sure he was talking about me. But to who?

I wondered…

At that point, I heard a sound from the lobby, so I hurried up and knocked on the door.

Not a second later, Goldy answered it, relief overcoming him when he saw me. "Oh, thank goodness," he said, letting out a deep exhale. "I was so worried! I didn't think you'd be gone so long."

"Oh. I'm sorry," I sheepishly replied, honestly feeling awful. "Umm, what time is it?"

"Past midnight!"

"Ohh. I'm sorry, very sorry." I was trying to look past him into his room; I figured this wasn't too obvious since I was a little taller than him.

"Did you find him?" he asked.

"Find who?"

"That hobo," he said. "The one who forgot his book?"

"Oh. Right, right. Right," I said. "Umm, no, I didn't – I mean, I _couldn't_ find him. I looked all over the place too. So I'll have to keep an eye out for him."

He peered at me, his brow entrenched with worry. "Are you alright?"

"What? Yes, of course. Of course I'm alright. Just a bit cold still, I guess," I quickly said. "Are you?"

"Me?" he said. "Am I alright or am I cold?"

"Well. Both, I guess?"

"I'm fine… I was just worried about you," he said. "Why?"

"Oh, I just – I mean, I thought I heard you talking to someone in here, so, ummm. Is Jimmy still here?"

"No, he dropped me off hours ago," he said. "About two and a half hours ago."

"Oh, really? That long ago?" I said, amazed that much time had passed.

"Yeah."

"Then who were you talking to in there?"

The way he looked at me then… It was a mix of things, guarded, tense, like he didn't want me asking this question and he sure as hell didn't want to answer it. That's what made me stop and ask myself: had I seen a single town clown since meeting Goldy? I couldn't remember, but deep down, I knew I hadn't. That was what made me finally able to see the light: Goldy wasn't my friend, wasn't my savior any more than Hack was. In fact, he was worse than Hack, much worse: Goldy was working with the cops to keep an eye on me, and I'd been dim enough to just let it happen. God only knew what kind of information they had on me now that "Goldy Gary" was working as their spy and informant.

Good God, I'd walked right into a fucking trap.

"I wasn't talking to anyone," Goldy told me in a firm voice that wavered just a little, just enough to confirm to me that he was lying.

At that point, he opened the door all the way, and indeed, there was no one in the room.

But there was a window.

I didn't even know where to start. I just looked at him, heartbroken and helpless, eviscerated that he would deceive me so elaborately. And yet, was it really a surprise? That this man, this virtuous, kind-hearted man, was not invested in my friendship, but my retribution? If he really were so good, wouldn't that actually be _expected?_

Taking my shoulder, he suddenly looked at me with more concern than a face should ever have and said, "Swarm, are you _okay?_ Did something happen?"

"M'fine," I said, shaking my head in a stupid, lolling fashion. "Just tired, s'all."

He place his hand on my face, and his touch was so gentle that it might've broken my heart if it weren't already. "Are you _sure?"_

"Yes, fine, I promise," I heard myself saying.

I was so fucking drunk, my mouth still tasted terrible beyond belief, and here was this beautiful, sweet, gentle man, whose lap I was desperate to cry in, who I didn't want to believe had lured me into the trap of my demise. God, why did things always have to be like this? How much more was I supposed to take?

His thumb grazed my cheek, and he let out a soft sigh. "Well, okay," he eventually said. "You should get some rest though. You've had a long day."

I nodded. He took his hand away. It hurt more than I thought it would.

Then he said, "Don't be afraid to wake me up if you need anything, alright?"

Again, I just nodded. I couldn't speak. I looked up at him, and he offered me a small smile.

"Okay," I managed to say.

"Goodnight now," he said in a quiet voice.

"G'night," I murmured in response, and without taking another look at him, I dragged my feet away before he could close the door on my face.

When I got to my room, the first thing I noticed was that something was off. Very off. Even after I turned the lights on, it still didn't seem right, but I couldn't figure out what it was. It didn't look different, or smell different; it just _felt_ different. That was when I thought maybe that dick that was with Goldy had come in here to snoop around. Fuck, that was it, wasn't it. So they thought they were going to close in on me, were they? Well, I wasn't about to give them the opportunity – I was going to get out of here, and fast. I'd catch out to the east coast, maybe Florida – no, Canada. Yes, I'd blow the rest of my stake in on a real good coat and gloves and go north. I could handle a hard winter, couldn't I?

It wasn't ideal leaving when I was so tired, but I sure wasn't going to stick around for what was coming. I checked to make sure I hadn't left anything in the room and found that I.W.W. pamphlet in the locker. Should I take it, I wondered? In the end, I decided it could kill time as well as any reading material, and with that, I was off.

But just as I was about to head out the door, I heard a voice in my mind, not the hateful, thought-like one, but a much calmer, clearer one.

"Stop," it said, and I was so scared, I probably would've done so anyway.

"Do not be afraid," the voice said in a quiet tone of authority.

I felt compelled to listen, but my heart still pounded and my mind raced, wondering if the cops had somehow hypnotized me. Maybe when I was sleeping? Was that even possible?

"No, Stanley," the voice assured me, and that was when I finally realized: this was the same voice I'd heard through the scripture at the Bible Rescue Mission.

"Listen to me," the voice said. "You are safe here. That man is a friend. You can trust him."

With that, a calmness came over me as if it were breathed into my very soul, sweeter than a meadow breeze, gentler than a kiss goodnight. My body felt limp, overly relaxed and floaty, and I dropped to my knees.

Yet even in this surreal, dream-like state, I still had to wonder: if Goldy was my friend, then who was he talking to in his room? That was when I remembered something Goldy himself told me, that it was impossible to fully understand God's plan for me but that I had to trust him anyway. I had to put all my faith in him, out of nothing _but_ faith. And God, was I trying, but if today were any indication, I sure wasn't trying hard enough.

I had to try harder. A lot harder.

So, with my knees still on the floor, I clasped my hands together and prayed harder than I ever had, begging God to grant me the strength to avoid temptation and the courage to face another day. Another day without Kyle, without Hack, without my mom. But although I had lost all those people, and the pain would never go away, God had sent someone to guide me when I needed it most. And now, I had the confirmation that Goldy was indeed someone I could trust, whose guidance was true and would help me become closer to God.

Tonight, the Lord God spoke to me, reminding me that I was safe and loved, that I wasn't all on my own. But I had to let His light guide me, even when all I wanted to do was hide in the shadows, swimming in my fears and darkness. Especially then. It would be hard, very hard, but though the road was daunting, I was not afraid, for I was not alone.


	6. the stars in your sky

**A/N:** Full chapter title is "the stars in your sky are the stars in mine."

* * *

That Wobbly's red book was one of those rare and horrible things that opens your eyes forever. They say ignorance is bliss, and there's a lot of truth to that. The funny thing is though, _The Origin of the Family, Private Property and the State_ doesn't start out as something that's going to ruin you. It doesn't seem personal when it's telling you about how primitive humans formed group and pairing marriages; it just seems like boring old history. But apparently, things took a dark turn at the dawn of civilization. With the invention of private property, the man of the family began to obtain more wealth than the woman, because he owned the livestock and slaves. However, maternal law meant his children couldn't inherit his wealth. So, he changed the law.

And that was it for women – they became domestic slaves to their husbands, bound by the shackles of modern monogamous marriage. It was a story of domination, enduring from the dawn of history until… well, present day, I guess. It wasn't a love story, that was for sure.

It shouldn't have mattered much to me – I wasn't normal; I wasn't ever going to have a family.

But I'd had one, once.

Now, my dad was never cruel to my mom – I mean, he never hit her or anything. He was just mean to her sometimes. He'd interrupt her, ignore her, badger her endlessly. Most people just thought he was a buffoon, but they didn't see the toll it took on her. We couldn't stop him, either, because he was the head of the household, as he so often liked to remind us.

And if that didn't just say it all, then luckily I had Engels here to spell it out for me: _"The first class oppression [is] that of the female by the male sex."_ In a marriage, the man was the bourgeois, and the woman was the proletariat. It wasn't an analogy – it was real. And with society full of all these little unequal marriages, was it any wonder the whole thing was unequal?

The taste this left in my mouth was unbearable, putrid and granular. Worse yet, Engels was relentless, saying that love like this wasn't equal, wasn't free. And who could argue with that? But, he said, one thing that would come out of the communist revolution (because that's always the solution with these guys) was this thing called "individual sexlove." This was love and sex between equals, based upon mutual passion and respect, love that _wasn't_ characterized by inequality.

I couldn't help but think of jockers and punks… and Fuzzy and Mole. All those situations were inherently unequal, full of animosity, the furthest thing from love. And I had been the bourgeoisie. No – the perpetrator. The jocker. I remembered my apathy, my selfishness, my total disregard for Fuzzy and Mole. They weren't people to me when I was fucking them; they were just receptacles for my basest desires. And hell, I'd known it all along on some level, but being drunk or drugged had pushed me away from the truth of the matter, anesthetizing my morals right along with my senses.

God, how the hell did I go from making love to Kyle to fucking acquaintances like a wolf?

Those memories were a sickness. I wished none of it had ever happened. I wished love and sex were fair and equal and good; I wished there _was_ no fucking bourgeois or proletariat. Society was so much more broken than I'd ever even realized – it had gone so far as to taint something as pure as _love._

Should I have been so surprised though?

These were the horrible truths that red book taught me in my room, at night, away from the light of day, when the terrible things it described were all too evident. I was just lucky Goldy didn't ask me about it, not even when we went looking for that Wobbly to give him his book back. We never found him though. Maybe he was from the Back of the Yards or something, or maybe he'd just up and vanished, his role in my life to impart upon me the burden of this book. And what a terrible burden it was, becoming a filter through which I saw the world. There was no shutting it off.

And that was the case as me and Goldy were headed to the dump to go junking. Our plan was to donate the money to the Red Cross to help out with the storm over the past weekend – Chi had flooded and been wrecked a bit, but the real damage was from the ships sunk throughout the Great Lakes and all the snow dumped in Ohio and Pennsylvania. We'd been doing a lot of good deeds lately, and it felt good, like progress. It beat basing your salvation purely on belief, anyway.

It was a little after nine in the morning and strangely not too bad out. Even so, all I could think about was warming up with a shot of whiskey. Just one. That's all. I hadn't had a drop to drink since that night after the lecture three weeks ago, and I couldn't help feeling like I deserved one.

But we can't have nice things, you know, gotta be good and all.

That was when I noticed how sad Goldy looked. It disarmed me, seeing that kind of bleakness in him. I was torn between reaching out to him or looking away. But before I could choose, our eyes met, and a smile of acknowledgement spread across his face.

"What's up?" he said.

"Oh, nothing, just… Are you alright?"

"Oh, I'm fine," he said, but then he confessed, "I was just thinking of all the men whose lives have been lost at sea. Their families too, you know? That's a lot of people, a lot of pain."

I hated to admit that I was disappointed it wasn't something more personal.

"Oh, uh. Yeah. Well, may God rest their souls," I said.

"Amen," he replied in absolute seriousness.

We were going over the bridge now, the slew of tracks below us and the lake up ahead, tumultuous and gray. It seemed more than ever like the perfect place to die. But I had failed, and I still didn't know why, exactly. Maybe it wasn't worth dwelling on though. What mattered more was that I'd evaded damnation. And maybe if I played my cards right, I could see my mom again.

"Do you think it's hard to get into heaven?" I asked Goldy. "I mean, do you think a lot of people get in, or only a couple?"

"Well, that one's a little complicated, but the short and sweet answer is that yes, most people end up in a kingdom of glory," he said. "God wants all his children to be saved, you know, so that's why he gives us second chances. He's so good to us, he even gives us the chance to repent after death."

"After death?" I said. "But aren't we judged _at_ death?"

"Oh, we are, but I'm not just talking about judgment – I'm talking about eternal progression," he explained. "So let's say you go to the spirit prison when you die, maybe just because you never received the gospel. If you receive it when you're there, then you can ascend into paradise."

"Wait, what?" I said. "You mean you can go from hell up to heaven?"

"Ha, well, yes and no…"

He told me about the Latter-Day Saints' conception of the afterlife. It had all been fleshed out from divine revelations – the Bible contained only a basic blueprint of the afterlife. Apparently, when you die, you go to the spirit world, which contains paradise, where the good souls who have accepted the gospel can rest, and the spirit prison, where everyone else goes and suffers. And yes, you can go from the spirit prison to paradise so long as you accept the gospel (and so long as you weren't really, really bad in life).

The thought that you weren't eternally damned unless you messed up beyond belief was a comforting one, to say the least, so comforting, in fact, that it seemed too good to be true. Again with all this crazy Mormon stuff, I really wanted to believe it, but I just couldn't make myself.

At that point, we had arrived at the dump. The place was still muddy, with little murky pools interspersed throughout the mush. Oh well. That's what boots are for, I guess. I just prayed we didn't run into fucking Hack here. Or Craig or Fuzzy or anybody else I knew.

Goldy put his hands on his hips and proclaimed, "Well, you know what they say! 'One man's meat is another man's poison'!"

We started looking around, and he resumed telling me about the Mormon afterlife: "There's more to it than the spirit world though. The _real_ exciting part happens after the Second Coming of Christ."

"Oh?"

"When the Lord Christ returns to earth? To judge the living and the dead?"

"Oh, uh, yeah. Right."

"That's when all souls will be resurrected and the final judgment will take place. And when almost everyone will be sorted into one of the three degrees of glory," he said. Before going on, he snatched up a can and asked, "How's this?"

"Let's see."

Using the magnet, I checked the can and found it didn't stick.

"Aw, too bad," he said, about to toss it back.

"No, wait! That's good!" I said. "That means it's a non-ferrous metal, like tin or aluminum or something, so it's worth more."

"Oh. Great!" he said, dropping it instead in his burlap sack. "You're so smart, Swarm."

"Oh, God, no I'm not," I mumbled, blushing a little. "Any 'bo coulda told ya that."

"Maybe so, but few could say it so eloquently!"

That set my cheeks on fire. I didn't even know what to say. It was a miracle I managed to sputter out, "T-thanks."

He was just too much for me sometimes.

As we collected scrap metal, he told me about those "three degrees of glory," which was basically heaven: "The lowest is the telestial kingdom, for those who never received the gospel, or who commit crimes like murder or adultery. Then comes the terrestrial kingdom, where people go for different reasons. Like, if they did receive the gospel but rejected it for whatever reason.

"But the highest level of glory is the celestial kingdom, a state of perfection where the Savior and the Heavenly Father live. Getting into the celestial kingdom means you haven't just received salvation, but _exaltation_ ," he said, sounding truly excited. "Only the most righteous will inherit celestial glory – those who upheld the law, accepted the gospel and testimony of Christ, and also entered into the new and everlasting covenant of marriage."

"What? You mean, got married?"

"Well, not just any old marriage – celestial marriage. That means receiving the ordinance of temple marriage, where you're sealed with your beloved 'for time and all eternity' – not just in this world, but in the next."

Now that, that was just beyond stupid, that you had to get married to get into the best heaven (as much as I really did appreciate the free pass into crappy heaven). Everything in that little red book was coming back to me, all that stuff about monogamous marriage containing "a germ of slavery," and how it just wasn't ethical, no matter how much the couple loved each another.

But then a bell went off in my head as I remembered something much, much worse: polygamy.

"So, um, this celestial marriage…" I began, trying to glean some more info here. "Can you tell me some more about that?"

"Sure!" he replied. "So, celestial marriage is marriage in a temple that's ordained by the holy priesthood. It lasts for 'time and all eternity', in this world and in celestial worlds – it's not 'til death do us part. It's a very special blessing, and only those deemed worthy by the Church are allowed to receive it."

Carefully, I said, "So, if a man and a woman get married in the Church, then they're bound for all eternity? Is that how it works?"

"Yep!"

Despite myself, I found myself asking, "Just one man and one woman?"

Deflating to the point of grimness, he said, "Yeah. The Church doesn't allow plural marriages anymore. Hasn't for a long time now."

"Oh, is that so?"

"Yep, not since 1890," he said. "The President of the Church received divine revelation saying the Church would face catastrophe otherwise."

"I see…"

A silence ensued that was so awkward it was almost physically painful. But when Goldy came over to check another can, he smiled at me, which was a relief. I smiled back. Or tried to, anyway.

You know though, even if the Mormon Church had stopped allowing polygamy, it was still outrageous they ever had. That would've been like having not just one, but multiple domestic slaves. Even outside a Marxist lens, if a man had multiple wives, then it was clear his wives weren't equal to him. So then what about just one man and woman? Could that ever be equal? What about holy? Could something holy be unethical? As nutty as I knew some of this Mormon shit was, I couldn't help but feel deeply disturbed that this "celestial marriage" was a requirement for getting into the best heaven. But I guess that was how it was when an angel popped up out of nowhere and told you to go dig up some gold plates. And when you could keep getting "divinely inspired" about just about anything. All bets were off then.

But were they? Jesus had spoken to me personally, so I knew it was possible, so maybe I should be less righteous about Mormonism being wrong. Maybe Marx and Engels were the ones who were wrong. But then, they had had something the Mormon Church didn't have: a good argument based on evidence.

With a patient smile, Goldy said, "What're you thinking?"

"Just… about this marriage stuff," I admitted.

"Yeah?"

"I guess I just don't understand why you should have to get married to get into the highest level of heaven."

"Well, because that's what God says. He wants us to get married and have children – to 'be fruitful and multiply'," Goldy said. "There's this verse in Genesis that's always struck me… After God made Adam but before He made Eve, He says it's not good for man to be alone. Such a simple thing, isn't it? But it's so true; you can _feel_ how true it is. People just weren't made to be alone."

Yes, I could indeed feel that truth. Goldy and I had even talked about it when we first met.

"But what if you never find someone who'll marry you?" I asked him. "Or what if it just doesn't happen, for any number of reasons?"

"Well, then I'm afraid you won't be able to get into the celestial kingdom," he said, hesitating. "But even the glory of the telestial kingdom is beyond our wildest dreams. Besides, you can always progress from one kingdom to the next. And you have all eternity to do so."

Glancing at him, I tried to read more into his expression, but all I saw was his pleasant kindness towards me. Increasingly, I hated when we talked about things and you could just feel that there was so much bubbling under the surface, left avoided and unsaid – on both sides. I almost had to laugh, because here we were surrounded by all these broken things, things that had been so used and abused they had no choice but to be honest about their pain, like a chest split open. How heartbreaking it must be, to be forced to declare that you were unloved, that someone had discarded you.

That was when I spotted it. Sitting atop a broken cable spool was a green Russian-style hat, almost identical in color to Kyle's eyes. One of the flaps was nearly torn off, a limb hanging loosely and begging for repair. I went to pick it up, touching the fur lining softly and wondering how someone could throw away something that could be fixed so easily. It seemed so cruel.

"What a nice hat!" Goldy commented. "Think you could fix it?"

"Yeah," I said. "I just need to get some green thread."

It made me wonder though – was Kyle suffering now, torn and alone? Did he regret leaving me? There was something real and honest about what we'd had – deep down, I really felt that, which was why it was so painful, because how could Kyle forsake that? The hat flap was ripped badly, thrown away by someone who could just afford to buy a new one, but as deep as the tear was, it was still easy to fix. It went without saying that I wanted that to be true with Kyle too, but there was no recourse there, no needle and thread, so lovingly used to teach him how to sew.

Except… maybe there was.

When we got back to the hotel later, that city directory was sitting on the stool where it always was. Goldy had retired to his room to read scripture before dinner, so I took the opportunity to go through the book, far more keyed up about it than I should've been. I hunted through the B's in the resident directory for a name I was almost afraid to see.

Breiner, Brewer, Broderick… And then, all of the sudden, much too soon, there it was:

Broflovski Gerald lawyer 1048 W Oakdale.

That was Kyle's father. And that was Kyle's address, the place where he had grown up, where he might even be right now. That place was here in Chi, and I could go there. I could go there, and maybe he'd be there, and maybe we could talk. Even if things between us could never be fixed, even if our class differences had damned us, maybe we could just… talk.

At the very least, I might be able to see him again, even if all he did was slam the door in my face.

* * *

I didn't know where West Oakdale was exactly, besides that it was in Lake View (which I had never been to either), so I was following the El out of town and checking the cross streets. The day had warmed up to a breezy sixty some degrees, making me feel dangerously hopeful. Maybe Kyle would fall apart with relief, crying and saying how sorry he was. Well, maybe that was a little too hopeful. If he at least agreed to talk to me, that would be more than enough.

As I approached the outer suburbs, I was careful to keep my head down. It wasn't safe for a 'bo outside Hobohemia, lest of all a hot one. Though I didn't think I looked too grubby, it went without saying I didn't belong out here, and that only became more true the more north I went. Granted, there were some apartment buildings up here too, but some of these houses were just ludicrously big – monstrous, beautiful abodes that were fascinating yet disturbing to look at. How did people afford these things? And why did they need all that space anyway, unless they had nine kids or something? The house I grew up in had three rooms, which felt like a luxury to us, but you could've fit three or four of my houses inside some of these colossuses.

There were people around, whether walking or patronizing the shops, or taking the El. Some stared at me, inevitably. Down one street I crossed, some kids were playing baseball, and I had only just noticed them when that ball was soaring out of bounds, coming right towards me.

It hit the ground a yard or two away, bouncing a few times before hitting my feet. I stopped it with my shoe and was about to reach down and throw it back, but before I could, I locked eyes with the kid who'd coming running for it. He was maybe ten years old, light-haired and petrified in fear, just standing there in the middle of the street staring at me with big bug eyes.

He was looking at a monster.

Shame bombarded me – my face burned up, and I tried to look away but couldn't. The whole universe was working against me, the perfect afternoon reduced to a sluggish nightmare. I had to give this kid his ball back but couldn't. No, forget it – I had to get out of here. Run. Leave. Now!

Still, it took three more horrible seconds of that kid staring at me before I finally, finally shot off.

As I bolted up the street, my pulse was pounding in my skull, saying: _"Monster. Freak. Ugly. Hideous. A hideous monster. Did you see his face? Did you see how scared he was of you?"_

Tears welled up in my eyes, and the wind tore them out, forbidding me from holding them in. When I finally stopped running, I wiped the tears from my face. Doing so compelled me to run my finger down the bridge of my nose, and I recoiled as always when it went over that hard bump. My nose had healed, and the bruises were gone, but I'd been left with a weird, ugly bump in the middle of it. Probably forever.

God, I really was a monster.

I took a long, shuddering breath and analyzed my surroundings. I didn't know how far I'd ran, or how many cross streets I'd passed. Maybe I should just go home. An El station was right over there, mocking me with a relaxing trip back to the Loop. But there was no way I was getting on there after what'd just happened.

The sun had turned into that lazy, liquid gold that it did before sunset. It would be even more dangerous for me to be out here after dark.

So I started back down the street, unsure yet whether I was heading home or just backtracking. I did check the cross streets though: W Fletcher, W Barry, W Wellington…

W Oakdale.

For a second, I just looked at the street sign. The white text on the brown background, the black iron swirl curling up round the top of the lamppost, the unlit glass globe hanging down. To the right was an inconspicuous residential street, to the left, the El blocking my view.

I went right.

The first house was 1014, on my right, so I guess that meant I should keep going this way, judging from how West Madison Street worked. The numbers grew larger, suddenly skipping a few to 1028, then a few more and a few more.

After 1042, I knew the next house was his. I could just feel it. And when I stepped in front of it, I was so overwhelmed by its looming size and blustering detail, that all I could do was stand there and take it all in.

It was a yellow brick mansion, large but with tight posture, decked with terra cotta designs here, there, everywhere: lining the top of the façade, under the windows, above them – even the fence was made of beautiful red terra cotta. The front porch and steps had quirky woodwork that was lavishly detailed and painted a strange yet pleasant array of colors. The house was distinct, to say the least – it wasn't trying to be like any other house; it was proud of its uniqueness, even defiant about it.

And it was all too much for me. As casually as I could, I crossed the street, where I could study the house from a safe distance, from behind a tree.

That was the house Kyle had grown up in. The one where he had lived, ever since he was a baby, celebrating birthdays and holidays and accomplishments. It was the house he'd ran away from, escaping at night to hit the road, just like I had done years before him. To think, something so unbearable for him had been brewing in such a beautiful, strange house, such that its many rooms could not contain its pressure…

Would it have been better had we never met, I sometimes wondered? I always came up with a no. But now I didn't know.

Thinking of him in that big nice house now, kicking back on an ornate sofa or sitting down for a four-course meal, filled me with bitterness like spoiled molasses, dark and pungent. His complaints about home couldn't have been so bad if he just went right back to them. I just wasn't enough to make him stay, no matter that I was giving him everything I had.

 _Except a bed and a roof over his head,_ the trees seemed to whisper as a breeze rolled in.

 _It was summer!_ I had to keep myself from screaming.

A dead leaf floated by as a cruel reminder that summer was over. As if I fucking needed one. That autumnal chill in the air was unavoidable as I marched to the end of the block, the sun beginning its descent below the houses and bare trees. Summer was over indeed, and the little school boy had returned home from vacation.

I could just see it, him telling his little _college friends_ how over the summer he'd caught trains like a real, bonafide hobo profesh! Wow! Caught trains, huh? How brave! How daring! You must be quite the athlete!

The laugh I let out was a mean one, and it felt good. But now I had another choice to make. I could go back to that weird house and knock on the fucking _door_ or something, or I could do the smart thing and go home, whether by train (no) or foot (ugh). Where was fucking Jimmy when you needed him, huh?! Fuck that guy. Fuck him, fuck Kyle, and fuck everybody who lives up here.

I shouldn't be up here. I should _not_ be up here. What the _hell_ made me think this was a good idea?! God, I was so stupid! Stupid, stupid, stupid!

And ugly. Can't forget ugly.

Running my fingers through my hair, I took into account one small blessing: there didn't seem to be any town clowns around here. Or at least I hadn't seen any. I was sure they patrolled these neighborhoods for riff raff like me though.

But I wasn't riff raff if somebody invited me into their home, now was I.

Against my better judgment, I went back. It wasn't courage that prompted me. In fact, my heart was beating a mile a minute, each step I took feeling like it'd be the last one before I bolted back in the opposite direction. I wasn't even thinking of what might happen. I was just thinking of myself going up those fancy steps and ringing that doorbell.

When I got there, I noticed a car parked in front, but I couldn't remember if it had been there before or not. It seemed like something I wouldn't have missed, so I guess whoever it was had just arrived. Meaning they would've arrived within the past few minutes. So it was good I had left.

I wondered who it was. Kyle's dad maybe? Well, if you could afford a mansion, you could afford a car. Fucking cars. Driving around, making smoke, scaring horses. _"I don't need to take the train, I have a caaaaar,"_ one rich guy says to another. Assholes!

The last rays of sunlight were reflected in the house's windows to blinding effect. I strolled up and down the sidewalk a bit more, literally praying to God that no snotty neighbor was spying out her window and getting all hooty over my presence.

When I got back to the house, someone was at the front door. I immediately darted behind a tree to spy. It was a woman (Kyle's mom, maybe?), and she seemed to be talking to someone inside the house. I couldn't make out any of what was being said though, even though the woman speaking was loud. So that was probably Kyle's mom.

The woman on the porch took to leave, and that was when I noticed the ruffled white cap on her head, which made a whole lot of sense when I saw the white apron under her coat.

A maid.

A fucking _maid!_

It was just amazing, so shocking and yet so not-so that all I could do was scoff in disbelief, thoroughly disgusted. The maid headed towards Sheffield Street, maybe to an El station, or maybe she was walking the whole way back like me. She didn't belong here either, that was for sure. Unless she was scrubbing floors, apparently.

Just amazing. A maid to scrub the floors and wash the windows, maybe even wipe their asses if they weren't feeling up to it. Unbelievable. Just unbelievable. How could anyone bear having such a glaring rendition of class relations beneath their own roof? How? I thought of that lawyer saying how the bourgeois didn't care about the proletariat, and well, they sure didn't.

It was time for me to get the hell out of here.

* * *

So maybe I hadn't been completely honest. Maybe I hadn't gone three weeks without drinking. Maybe it had been more like… four days. The last time didn't count though, because it was November 7, the anniversary of my mom's death. And what else was I to do but drink on such a day?

That night, I had smuggled a bottle of vodka back into my room so I could drink in private, but tonight I'd plopped down in one of the dive cafés of South State, sandwiched between the nickel museums and vaudeville theatres. So it was here in this tacky place called "German Village" that I was drinking whilst surrounded by all this creepy German shit – dolls, lederhosen, decorative beer mugs.

God, what an awful day. What an awful fucking day.

For all the talk of progress, for all my renewed belief, I was right back where I started from, huddled in the corner of some grimy dive joint, drowning my sorrow in drink. Tomorrow and tomorrow and tomorrow would keep on coming, the passage of time not creeping and invisible but torturous and all too present, pummeling me with its sound and fury like waves crashing upon a shore. It either meant too much or indeed meant nothing at all, but with the present endlessly repeating itself, I'd never know which it was until my candle was finally, finally snuffed out.

For now though, it was burning right in front of me, a meager flicker, but burning nonetheless. I shut my eyes and sighed, and then, like waking from a dream, a voice cut in:

"Is this seat taken, sweetheart?"

She was too many colors: red lips and pink cheeks on pale skin, brown lids, violet hat with gloves to match. Her hand was already resting on the back of the chair.

"No."

To my amazement, she plopped herself down at my table, resting her small chin upon her laced fingers and looking at me with those big glassy eyes.

"I couldn't help but notice you over here all by yourself and wonder if you might like some company," she said with a tilt of her head, the feather of her hat willowing in accordance.

"No, I—I'm fine, thanks."

Tracing a circle on the table with her fingertip, she said, "Ooh? You like being alone?"

"I didn't say that."

"We could have some fun tonight," she said, that coy grin returning. "You're very handsome, you know."

I guffawed, incredulous and disgusted, perhaps all the more so because it was actually sort of nice to hear, even if from a prostitute.

"It's true," she insisted, leaning forward a little.

She was lying, but I could hardly blame her – we were all just trying to get by, one way or another. The only difference was that her work degraded her in a way mine didn't. I'd probably always known that on some level; I just hadn't had a little red book to spell it out for me.

But now that I did, my God, did it hurt seeing this poor soul selling lies to sell her body. Beneath all that makeup and flattery was a human being, one who got up in the morning and went to bed at night, the burden of such awful, demoralizing work ever weighing on her. And how awful it must be, to cater to even the basest of men's sexual cravings.

At the very least, I owed her some honesty, so as hard as it was for me to say, I told her, "I'm sorry, but I don't want to sleep with you."

Something real came in through her glassy brown eyes – a sudden shot of clarity, a mix of scrutiny and confusion.

"What?" I asked, wildly uncomfortable.

That startled her right out of staring, and she suddenly got up, sneering and saying, "Suit yourself then."

The relief of solitude was immediate, but not enough – though the café wasn't crowded, there were still plenty of other people here, and I hated it. It wasn't good for man to be alone, God said, so he had sent me a prostitute. If that didn't just say everything.

In my head, I could see Hack lamenting what had just transpired, and it made me want to scream. That disgusting, morally vacuous, hedonistic son of a bitch. Such cruelty, such unimaginable carelessness.

And yet… When I looked over at the empty seat across from me, I wanted nothing more than to see him smiling back at me, raising a freshly-filled mug of beer and saying, _"To life!"_

It was a joke; it always had been. Because life was hard, and full of pain. Hack knew that. I just never thought he'd add to it.

Nobody who knew him would deny Hack was a hedonist – sex, drugs, booze, you name it. But I'd always believed that none of that really mattered – what mattered was that he was a good person. And I truly believed that he was. No, I didn't like that he solicited the whorehouses and burlesque shows, but I'd always just figured my disgust towards all that was rooted in my inversion, or my rural Catholic upbringing.

I knew better now.

Out on the sidewalk, where the bright white bulbs of nickel theatres penetrated the night, posters of scantily-clad women in suggestive poses drew passerby's into their dimly lit showrooms. Here was a "Lotus Blossom, Princess of the Orient," wearing a silk dress with a huge slit up the side; here, "Kitten Boots," in absurdly high boots that went past her knees – no clothes, just a ruffled leotard; and who could forget, "Princess Mazella," who does the "lily dance" wearing next to nothing?

I'd never paid these vaudeville posters any attention before – in fact, I'd always been careful _not_ to look at them – but studying them now, I couldn't help feeling incredibly sad for these girls. To have to turn to this for money had to be so demoralizing. Because that's what it was about, money – no girl had a picture of herself posted in Hobohemia wearing next to nothing just for kicks. It wasn't really about "sin." I mean, it was, I guess, but it wasn't the girls who were the sinners.

How many times had Hack gone to these shows and never once thought of how those women felt up there on stage, wearing nearly no clothes for a crowd of disgusting, drooling men? How could he think a nickel gave him the right to see a woman's naked body? That a dollar gave him the right to fuck her? I just couldn't understand it, that lack of regard. Hack knew those women wouldn't have sex with him if he didn't pay them, so why the hell was he putting them through that?

And then I realized: that when it came to his vices, nothing else mattered. That was why he could hire prostitutes and go to burlesque shows, and it was why he'd lied to me about the coke. Nothing mattered to him more than his vices, not even me.

So I guess he wasn't as good of a person as I'd thought.

* * *

On the way back, I was staggering so much people were moving out of the way.

"Sorry, sorry," I said, repeating it even when there was no one there. Sorry, sorry.

Then out of nowhere, I heard my name. When I raised my head, I saw Goldy there, standing in the yellow glow of the street lamp, with such concern on his face that I wanted to run and hide.

He put his hands on my shoulders and said, "Are you alright?!"

"Oh, Goldy, I'm drunk, I'm drunk, I'm so very, very drunk," I moaned, the words spilling from my mouth. "I'm not like you – I'm trying, but I'm not like you. I'm a failure, a drunk, a rotten, stinkin' no-good bum, and no matter how hard I try, I'll never be good 'cuz I'm _not_ good – I'm bad. Bad, bad, bad, just plain bad."

"Shh, stop that – you're not bad; you're good; you're good a person, I know you are," he said, touching my face.

"No I'm not!" I shouted. "Look at me!"

Frowning, he put his arm around me and directed me down the cross street. "Let's go for a walk, okay?"

By that point I was crying a little, hanging my head and weeping like a stupid fool.

"I didn't mean for this to happen today," I mumbled, sniffling. "I was just going on a walk to see something. I didn't expect to get so… out of sorts about it."

"It's okay," he said, squeezing my shoulder.

When we made it to the lake front, I sat down in the sand.

"I'm sorry, I don't have it in me to walk anymore," I told him. "I'm so tired; I walked so much today."

He said that was fine and sat down next to me, looking straight ahead into the water. The waves hitting the shore were gentle, innocuous, and the place was quiet.

Suddenly, he said, "Oh, I have something for you!" He took a wrapped handout out of his coat and gave it to me.

It was a powdered donut. Fresh tears pricked the corners of my eyes.

"But why?" I said, and that was enough to make a tear spill down my cheek.

Smiling, he said, "Do I need a reason?"

"I guess not." A moment later, I added, "Um. Thank you." I offered him some but he said he just got back from eating dinner. So I ate it myself.

It was good, filled with jelly, and made me realize I was hungry, that the rolls I'd had at the café hadn't been enough. I felt like I was being awarded for bad behavior though, which had me feeling so raw and slimy, almost malicious.

Goldy was writing in the sand with a stick.

"It's hard," he said. "I know it is. And I know what it's like to fail and feel horrible about it. It's…" He trailed off. "Crushing."

"Yes," I agreed. "I hate myself for it."

"I wish you didn't, but I hated myself for it too, very much so."

After a moment, I said, "I'm not as strong as you are though – I can't just pray it away."

"Maybe I haven't been completely clear with you… It wasn't just praying to God that helped me stop the habit."

"It wasn't?"

Looking right at me, he said, "I was in a sanitarium. For almost a year."

"Oh."

"I wasn't able to stop on my own," he said. "I'd reached the point where I was taking a bottle and a half of laudanum a day."

"Wow," I said. "That's a lot."

"Yes. Yes, it is."

Laudanum, huh? Sort of weird for a man.

"The drug created a wall between me and God," he said. "But I… didn't want to be close to God then anyway."

"Why not?"

He gave me a long, careful look, and then it was like time stopped when he said, "My wife and children died."

I just looked at him in the darkness for a few seconds, feeling the impact of his words upon the night, on him, on me.

"I'm so sorry," I heard myself saying.

He gave me a little smile and patted me on the shoulder, saying, "It's alright. We'll be together again someday."

"Still," I said, "I'm sorry. I know what it's like to lose someone. I can't imagine what you must've gone through."

"Yes… Seven children and one very bright and very beautiful woman. My wife, my best friend." For a long time he said nothing; he was silent, pensive, staring at the lake. Eventually, he said, "We'd been trying to have children for years, but each time, something would happen. It was hard on her. So when we learned she was pregnant with twins, we were cautious. We never could've imagined it would end the way it did."

He was speaking in a voice I'd never heard before – it was sad, achingly sad, but in a blank, gray way, as if he were very used to the brokenness of it all, a landscape of shattered glass lying on the ground. The anguish and turmoil could be seen in the shards but could only be felt if you went ahead and cut yourself with them. I ached for him. More than anything, I wanted to cut myself on those broken shards for him, to shoulder at least some of his pain, but they were his, and I didn't dare so much as touch them. The most I could do was listen.

"I never thought I'd be alone at thirty-seven. My life was supposed to go one way – get married, have children, support them. And I was supposed to do it with Annie," he said. "She was always there; my whole life, she was there by my side. The three years I went on a mission to Tahiti was the only time we were ever apart, and that was why it was so hard on me. I just couldn't get on without her – I wasn't a full _person_ without her. So losing her… it broke me. I grieved for my children too, of course, each and every one of them, but Annie was… Annie was everything to me. She was the glue that held me together, the foundation that held me up. And she did it with such dedication and energy that I never once stopped feeling blessed to have her in my life.

"Having her taken away from me felt like a punishment for a crime I didn't commit – I worshipped the Heavenly Father, spread his Word, lived my life in accordance with the Church's teachings. And I did think of ending it, I thought of it very seriously, and often. But I was too afraid to do it, and too afraid that it might ruin my chances of ever seeing her again. Because I was aware this life was only temporary. But without her, it seemed eternal."

It was then that his voice finally cracked, and he wiped away some tears that I hadn't noticed he'd shed.

His voice was even wearier when he spoke again: "It was an accident that I turned to laudanum. She was the one who actually used it, and rarely at that. So it felt sort of, I don't know, _symbolic_ or something that I found it under the bathroom sink. I was looking for some Aspirin, and there it was, just sitting there, last to be touched by her. It got rid of my headache immediately, of course, but it also made feel… different _._ Better. Like the world was just a little bit softer. Up 'til then, I'd never even had alcohol before, so I didn't understand what these chemicals could do to you. I knew they were habit-forming, but even as I was developing the habit, I felt I was justified, that I deserved at least _this_. And frankly? I didn't care if it was bad for me, or even if it might kill me – in fact, that would've been a very welcomed consequence.

"I also felt I could control it – I didn't want to admit to myself that I had a problem, not even when I was having to take more and more to get the same results. It was the sole comfort in my life, the one thing I could always turn to. Maybe you can relate to that."

"Yeah, I can," I said.

"It's a long, hard road," he said with a sigh. "I tried to quit myself a couple times and just couldn't do it. Going too long without it made me feel like the whole world was going to collapse – it made me _physically ill_ : nausea, chills, you name it. It wasn't just 'mind over matter,' you know? My body was dependent on it. My family couldn't grasp that at first. When they found out, I mean. They just kept telling me to pray to God for strength. And that's part of it, but it's not enough for these things, so I'm so, so sorry I gave you that impression."

"You didn't, you didn't," I insisted. "I don't know where I got that idea; maybe one of the mission houses, but not you."

"Alright. That's good." After a moment, he added, "I just wish there was more I could do for you."

"You already do a lot for me."

"I can't send you somewhere to get help though," he said.

"I don't know if I'd want to go someplace like that anyway."

"Mmm, well, not all of them are good, and they don't work for everyone anyway." In a softer voice, he added, "It pains me so much seeing you suffer though. I really hope you know that you can talk to me anytime about anything, even if it's something as private and awful as feeling like alcohol is the only thing that'll make you feel better, or feeling like you don't want to exist anymore. I know those feelings, and I know how lonely they are. So please, please, reach out to me when you feel that way, and we can work through it together. I'm here for you. You know that, right?"

The tears started up again. How was it that a man who had suffered so much could still be so kind and good, and to me of all people? I didn't deserve it, and he had to know that, yet here he was, spending every day with me, extending himself to me, helping me in so many ways, large and small. Somewhere along the line, I had grown to love him very deeply, but with that love had grown the fear that he would leave me. So to hear him say that he was here for me was almost too much for my poor heart to bear.

"What's wrong?" he asked in the sweetest, softest voice.

"I'm sorry, I'm sorry, I just—" A sob tore through my chest, and I covered my face as I continued to cry, feeling ashamed, so out of control. "I don't know how you can be so good to me."

"Oh, Swarm," he said in the gentlest voice, putting his arm on my shoulder. "How could I be anything but good to someone as special as you?"

That made me cry even harder, because it wasn't true.

He put his arm around me and rubbed my back, saying, "Shh, shh, it's okay, it's okay."

Sobbing, I blathered, "I'm sorry, I'm so sorry, you were trying to tell me about your pain and I ruined it by crying. I made it all about _me_."

Very softly, he lifted my head to make me look at him. "That's not what happened. I didn't tell you about me because I was looking for your support – I've _gotten_ my support, you haven't. I told you so you'd know I know what it's like to struggle with addiction, and to feel like a failure when you can't put a stop to it. How many times must I tell you, _I know what it's like?_ "

"I know, I know, I believe you," I said. "I just… Oh, Goldy, I'm so sorry. I'm so sorry about your wife and children. I can't imagine, I can't even imagine. I lost my mom, and it still hurts so bad every single day; I can't even imagine what you must've gone through."

Still rubbing my back, he said, "Yes, it's been hard without them. Very, very hard. But I know it's been hard on you too, losing your mother, and at such a young age. Our suffering is different, and we experience it differently, so there's no use comparing them." To that, he added, "Besides, we'll see them again someday. That's what I have to remind myself when I get sad they're not here with me now."

That was Goldy's dream, to be reunited with his family in paradise and later the celestial kingdom. I could only imagine the love that would exist in that family, which led me to wonder: was a family _really_ a bad thing? Could the good on the inside supersede a bad frame? As for Goldy's wife, even if men and women weren't equals in our society, and even if the monogamous family was a microcosm of that, it was clear to me he had loved her more than anything. Goldy was a good person, one of the sweetest, kindest people I'd ever met – he was no governing patriarch. Maybe it was true that the whole family unit was wrapped up in oppression, but when I looked at this man and thought of the pain he endured without the person he loved most at his side, all I could see was the love.

The same was true when I looked back on this summer: I remembered the love I'd shared with Kyle in the pain I felt from his leaving me. The matter of class was wrapped up in the circumstances, true, but at the end of the day, weren't we just people? It was confusing, and maybe you just couldn't disentangle these things, but at the end of the day, what I believed in more than mutable things like social status was love, whether it lived or died and left me dead on the side of the tracks, whether it was ephemeral or eternal.

There was only one love I'd had that was eternal.

I was afraid to look up and see the sky covered in clouds, but I dared myself to do it, exhaling in relief when I saw that the blue-black sky was perfectly clear, the stars and moon hanging sweetly above, little lights guarding the night. I spotted my own guardian easily: though she was small, not having any especially bright stars, she was sweet and kind and precious. She was there for me, and she loved me. She was my mom, the dolphin in the sky.


End file.
